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THE IVORY SERIES 


Each, 16mo, gilt top, 75 cents 


AMOS JUDD. By J. A. Mitchell 
Editor of " Life ” 

IA. A Love Story. By Q 
[Arthur T. Quiller-Couch] 

THE SUICIDE CLUB 

By Robert Louis Stevenson 

IRRALIE'S BUSHRANGER 
By E. W. Hornung 

A MASTER SPIRIT 

By Harriet Prescott Spofford 

MADAME DELPHINE 
By George W. Cable 

Other Volumes to be announced 




A MASTER SPIRIT 















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A MASTER SPIRIT 


BY 

HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD 


* | OF 0 ' 


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CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
NEW YORK 1896 




t 


Copyright, 1896, by 
Charles Scribner’s Sons 


TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
NEW YORK 


A MASTER SPIRIT 








A MASTER SPIRIT 


x 

“ If all your feathered fowl weren’t swans, 
Gratian,” she said, with her hand on the 
little tea-kettle. 

“ Oh, but this is no common swan, Ma- 
dama. ’ ’ 

“ The one in the galaxy ? Two lumps ? ’ ’ 

“ Three,” said the young man. “ Going 
to be. A bright particular star. Sixty-one 
Cygni. I tell you, she’ll do ! ” 

11 Then bring her on here and let me see 
her.” 

“ Easier said than done, Madama. Very 
good tea.” 

“It ought to be. It is emperor’s tea. 
No one else in the country has an ounce of 
it. I brewed it in honor of your discovery. 
—Ah, well, why not ? ’ ’ throwing off one of 


4 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


the innumerable shawls that wrapped her 
like the foldings of a mummy. 

“ There are several reasons. One is that 
the custom of inspiration is not to be judged 
by any Council of One. And another, and 
still better, is—she wouldn’t come. If she 
knew you were studying her, moreover, I 
don’t know that she wouldn’t fade into a 
nonentity. ’ ’ 

“How did you put your finger on this 
fine find, may I ask, then ? Yes, it is good 
tea, the very drink for me, it would put life 
into the dead.” 

“You are worth twenty dead women 
yet.” 

“Twenty dead women! I am worse 
than a dead woman. I am a failure, 
Gratian. ’ ’ 

“I will show you how much of a failure 
you are, if you will obey my wishes. You 
won’t have lived in vain when you have 
transferred your power to another organ, 
say. All the fire of genius you ever had is 
burning in you now. Losing your voice 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


5 


never put it out, any more than heaping 
ashes in the crater of Mount Helen put out 
the earth’s central fires.” 

“ Oh ! an extinct volcano ! ” with a gest¬ 
ure of angry contempt. * 4 Well, to our— 
lamb.” 

“ As you say. I saw her,” said Gratian, 
“at a fete down in that God-forsaken spot 
where I happened to go for rest after my 
fiasco. Oh, don’t look so black at the 
word. I am like a pointer bred so fine that 
he won’t point. Your fault, Madama ! I 
ought to have gone upon the boards early 
and worked my passage. A man doesn’t 
need to go up for honors before managing 
a dress-parade of Worth gowns before the 
foot-lights ; he doesn’t need to have mastered 
the arts and the poets, to have qualified 
himself for an examination upon Shakespeare 
and the musical glasses, in order to play his 
part in the parade. Something less subtle 
and more brute force-’ ’ 

“An actor-manager, Gratian, presenting 
his great living, moving picture, cannot be 



6 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


too well taught in the sciences, too widely 
read in the poets, too accomplished in the 

arts, too versed in human nature-” 

“ He can be altogether too too ! Well, 
that’s as it may be. It failed here, any¬ 
way,” balancing the spoon nicely on the 
edge of his cup. “But, as I was saying, 
they gave, on a lawn at the edge of a 
wood, what they called scenes from Shake¬ 
speare. That was all right; Shakespeare 
is a second Bible up there. . It was a 
bit of the Forest of Arden, a bit of the 
Winter’s Tale—a company of Shakespeare’s 
clowns themselves wouldn’t have done them 
worse. By the way, that’s a good idea, a 
Company of Shakespeare’s Clowns! But 
Perdita, Portia, Imogen, Viola, she was all 

there was of it, and she was-” 

“All your fancy could have painted 
them ? ’ ’ 

“ Far from it. And my fancy’s painting 

materials are-” 

“ On the scene-painting order here.” 

“ Not at all. I don’t pretend that she 





A MASTER SPIRIT 


7 


was Perdita et al. Only that she had the 
making of them in her. She is the begin¬ 
ning of great things, I tell you! ’ ’ said 
Gratian, leaning forward with a glow on the 
face which she was scrutinizing so keenly. 
“Absolute freedom, splendid power, a 
laugh-” 

“ ‘ Call it the bird’s warble.’ ” 

“Pst! I was never more in earnest in 
my life ! The girl is superb. And of a 
beauty-’ ’ 

“ Her beauty is not of the least conse¬ 
quence. Any monster can make up. ’ ’ 

“Contour, then. Large-limbed motion, 
firm,, fine. A swan’s grace. And a voice 
—by the Lord, it thrills you to the tips of 
your fingers when you think of the possibili¬ 
ties-” 

“You are clean daft.” 

“ I am business,” he said, passing his cup. 
“ I suppose when a man is in his cups 
they are not the size of these? ” 

“There isn’t much of this tea in the 
world, Gratian. It bears small cups-’ ’ 






A MASTER SPIRIT 


“ Being precious. Which brings us back 
to the treasure. I fell in with her last year 
—made acquainted by an accident. But I 

went back this spring-God !—It appalled 

you to see the same old poor thin pantomime 
of life, only a trifle more threadbare ! Her 
name—well, no matter. It gave me more 
familiar footing to address her so—I call her 
Domina.” 

“ Good, to begin with.” 

“ But I’ll tell you what, Madama. She 
will never come to you. You will have to 
go to her.” 

“I? I! with my throat, my trouble, 
my perpetual-” 

“ Yes, with your shawls. It is worth the 
candle. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Leave the city, my rooms, my doctor, 
my pupils-” 

“ Your pupils are gone or going out of 
town themselves. I will give you another. 
But she is not to suspect it. To open the 
case: She is a Puritan of the Puritans. 
Has been reared with an eye to missionary 





A MASTER SPIRIT 


9 


parts, as you may say. Regards the drama 
as Shakespeare, but the theatre as the de¬ 
scent into hell. Has no first notion that 
she was playing that afternoon, as no one in 
the three kingdoms and France is playing 
to-day. Might touch an actor’s hand as 
Christ touched the leper—in healing—but 
any other contact is moral leprosy. And 
all that sort of thing. Well, you are the 
one to help the chrysalid open—to show 
the girl her powers, to startle her imagina¬ 
tion, to kindle her desires, to tell her what 
wings spring with our successes, what stature 
of gods and goddesses the moment gives 
with those sweet appliances of clapping 
hands and crying bravas. ’ ’ 

“How can I tell her, Gratian?” she 
exclaimed, piercingly. “ I have lost 
them ! ’ ’ 

“ The same to you. I never had them ! ’ ’ 
with a light defiance, as if he made a thrust 
at fate. 

“ I have lost, I have lost them ! ” 

“ Basta, basta ! O dios mio ! ” screamed 


IO 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


a parrot, swinging upside down in his ring 
and fluttering his gay wings. 

“ They would have burned that bird for 
a thing of evil in the Middle Ages! But 
passe la , we will find something out of the 
wreck ! Go down to this place. I will 
carry your Fido Achates. The angora can 
go in a basket. Arline can attend to the 
parrot. You can manage the shawls.' The 
inn there is quite possible till I find you 
rooms. And the rest will arrange itself. I 
don’t suppose anything would tempt you 
into a boat on the river ? ’ ’ 

“Me? In a boat? On the river? 
Only the hope of immortality.” 

“You don’t have a pleasure in life,” said 
Gratian, looking at her steadily, and as if 
one must speak his thoughts. 

“ Yes, I have.” 

“What is it, pray? These narrow 
rooms — no excitements, no gratifications, 
no out-door-” 

‘ 4 The pleasure of seeing them fail when 
they deserve it.” 



A MASTER SPIRIT 


11 


“You won’t see her fail. And once in 
rapport with her you can fire her fancy as 
no one else can do. And that done, you 
can coach her to heart’s content. She will 
be docile—presently—more than any of 
these prima donnas you wrap in cotton-wool 
and keep there. I tell you she’s a mine of 
wealth. Whoever has the management of 
her has a fortune that Sarah couldn’t spend 
in a twelvemonth. And there’s more than 
that. There’s the delight of matchless 
power, the satisfaction of an ideal. She 
wants some knowledge of deep emotion yet 
—some experience—either great joy or great 
suffering. ’ ’ 

“ Why don’t you marry her, Gratian ? ” 

“I may have to yet. However, that 
isn’t in the bond. I am looking at her in 
another light—a purely commercial and ar¬ 
tistic light. And then—Brunhilde coming 
down the rocks to Wotan, brandishing her 
spear, with her ho-jo-to-ho, when Materna 
sings? Well, you marvel, you adore, but 
you don’t fall in love with the Valkyrie. 


12 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


And yet—if you let yourself go— No, no, 
a tight rein! Just now, you know”—re¬ 
sumed Gratian, after a moment’s pause, and 
in another tone. “ Pst! She is a religieuse, 
of a sort ; vowed to a service ; tacit under¬ 
standing ; sings in church; elevates human¬ 
ity ; goes about with a blind minister doing 
good, and all that. She hasn’t the first 
conception of art. Wore petticoats as 
Rosalind that day I spoke of. ’ ’ 

“Art, then, is a matter of petticoats? 
But the bicycle will cure all that. ’ ’ 

“ And two or three ballets. You couldn’t 
sing to her, could you ? ’ ’ 

“ Sing ? And with this throat ? ” And 
the movement of her long lean fingers was 
quite as if she could tear her throat with 
them. 

“Excellent!” said he. “You can’t 
speak to her without giving her a lesson. 
If that voice of yours won’t answer for the 
stage any more, all the same there isn’t an¬ 
other such voice in the country—except 
Domina’s. It’s an act of charity as well as 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


13 


of wisdom. The sketch is done ; Domina, 
herself, or else Nature, has outlined it—now 
paint your picture. Oh, she needs you ! 
She needs either you or suffering,” said 
Gratian, throwing himself back in his 
chair, his feet outstretched, his hands 
thrust in his pockets, his glance on the ceil¬ 
ing. 

She turned and surveyed him a little 
while—the long, supple shape; the white, 
full, upturned throat; the curving corners 
of the luxurious mouth, the magnificence of 
the lifted eyes. 

“ Gratian,” said the Madama, leaning 
forward and fixing him with the eye-points 
like the old gypsy’s, “ you had better teach 
her.” 


II 

Domina came up the hill, with the light 
cedar oars on her shoulder, following the 
lonely foot-path between birch thickets that 
climbed from the river behind the main 
street. 

In her dark-blue boating-dress, the per¬ 
fectness of figure might have beep lost, had 
you not been able to divine it by that free 
grace of movement which made someone say 
of her when she walked that you thought 
only of the waves of the sea, one flowing 
into another, such was the interplay of line 
and curve. 

But the face she turned on Gratian was 
illumined by the sunset glow which brought 
out its quality as if it were an ivory mask 
held before a flame, and showed depths of 
beauty and significance in the modelling 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


15 


that might have belonged to something as 
cold as an antique statue, or rather to a 
statue made of the virgin snow. 

Gratian came up behind her and took 
one of the oars, and went along whirling it 
on his outstretched hand, and crying Brun- 
hilde’s wild jodel. “Yes,” he said, “I 
would give half my life in order to have the 
other half all some faint reflection of the 
rapture I felt when I first heard that cry in 
its own key, and found a new meaning in 
music and in art, that Titanic music, that art 
of the gods! ’ * 

“ Was it so very moving?” resting on 
him the luminous eyes. 

“ There' are no words for it. In order to 
tell you of it one must have been able to 
write it, be able then to play it, to sing it. 
And if it is ecstasy to hear it, what it must 
be to render it, with all the multitude hang¬ 
ing on your lips, answering your eyes, their 
hearts beating with yours ! ’ ’ And he went 
on with his jodelling. 

“Well,” he said, “I dare say you will 


i6 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


know it all some day. You will not be con¬ 
tent with a nest in the south side of a hay¬ 
stack all your life, when you might have the 
whole sky.” 

“When a bird’s nest is built, the bird is 
apt to stay in it,” and then unconsciously 
Domina twirled the other oar and took up 
the wild cry with a searching sweetness. 

Gratian paused and faced her.* “The 
waste ! ” he said. “ The wanton wickedness 
of keeping such a voice as that for the choir 
of a village meeting-house ! A voice that 
was made to interpret the great creators, a 
voice that is due them as a debt, a voice that 
it is a cruelty, a dishonesty, to withhold 
from their work ! A voice that it is a self¬ 
ishness to withhold from the world that has 
all too few satisfactions ! ’ ’ 

Domina laughed ; and then, with a sort 
of malicious gayety opened her mouth and 
let such a warble of high flute-notes escape 
as only a mocking-bird on some topmost 
bough can give. ‘ ‘ I should be ashamed ! ’ ’ 
she said, as she ceased suddenly. 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


17 


“Certainly,” he said. “Not as you 
mean, though. But to keep in the dark a 
delight not meant for private life, too large 
for private life. And that is not the worst 
of it either ; for there is a sort of blasphemy 
in the neglect of your dramatic powers. 
Pasta herself could have had no more. Ah, 
what a Desdemona it would be, what a Leo¬ 
nora ! By and by what a Norma it might 

be, always what a Romeo-” 

“ A man’s part! ” 

“ What of that? Art has no sex. Your 
beauty—yes, pardon me, why should I not 
say so ? You are a young queen—it would 
be an unwise care that left you ignorant of 
your empire. ’ ’ Her look of proud resent¬ 
ment to his assumption of that care checked 
him a moment; but he went on. “ Romeo 

had no other beauty than yours-” 

“Ah, thanks,” she said, and laughed. 
“ Now I know, when you compare me to a 
man, what you think of me. ’ ’ 

“Is it possible, Domina, that what I 
think of you makes any difference ? ” he 


2 




i8 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


said, loftily. “ Do I give you my personal 
preferences, which are—which are—varia¬ 
ble ? No. But the standards of art are im¬ 
mutable. ’ ’ 

“ That is all so unintelligible to me.” 

“ It will be till you breathe it, are un¬ 
conscious of it—because art is your atmos¬ 
phere. By the way,” as they came out 
upon the broader street, ‘‘speaking ‘of art, I 
have an old friend here I should like to 
have you see. It is change of air for her 
here — an invalid—insufferably lonely — a 
woman with a story. Ah, that interests 
you ! ” said Gratian, taking the other oar. 
“Perhaps, though, it is not the sort of 
story you like. It has no love or lovers in 
it—only the love of this art you find so un¬ 
intelligible. Born of artists, an artist, beau¬ 
tiful, full of dramatic instinct to the ends of 
her hair, of genius, a voice to break your 
heart with its sweetness—sweet, oh, sweeter 
than love itself, they say, penetrating, pow¬ 
erful, persuasive! And of an ardor that 
spent days and weeks on a single phrase, 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


T 9 


opening the voice to a phenomenal compass, 
till its volume swelled or died like the wind, 
till the harsh was destroyed, the delicate 
strengthened, the thin made rich. And 
suddenly, just as she was ready for her tri¬ 
umphs, the voice ceased, went out like the 
flame of a lamp that is blown, left her a 
husky whisper. And although a portion re¬ 
turned to her, it could never be used other 
than in giving lessons. She came over seas, 
and for years now she has prepared others to 
take some crumb of the great feast all of 
which might have been hers. Anyone who 
saw her sorrow, her despair, in those days, 
knows all that Lucrezia, that Giulietta could 
tell. Ah, I see that you are sorry for her— 
there she is now, sitting in her arm-chair on 
that piazza among the rhododendrons. She 
has taken the lower floor of the cottage. 
All her shawls and her paraphernalia, as she 
calls it, her cat, her dog, her parrot, about 
her. What is that litter ? Oh, I see. 
Sometimes she has out her music-rolls and 
reads over the old parts she loved, and 


20 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


sings the songs in her memory, but with 
silent lips. She has been doing that now. 
What do you say, shall we go in ? See, the 
gate is ajar, that is a beckoning of fate. It 
will be a goodness, a charity—she knows no 
one here.” And before Domina quite un¬ 
derstood it, the gate had clanged behind 
them and they were mounting the steps to 
greet the strange dark woman who3e face 
in the sunset seemed to Domina a singular 
arrangement in black and yellow, bundled 
in shawls, with her feet on Fido, and a hot- 
water bag in her lap. 

“ So,” said the Madama, after a little 
while, in which they had spoken of indiffer¬ 
ent things, “ you are an artist. You will be 
a player, a singer ? ’ ’ 

Domina stared at her aghast, the woman 
had so taken things for granted. “ As for 
the drama,” the Madama suddenly ex¬ 
claimed, “ you know it is life——life clarified, 
intensified, the diamond of the char. And 
opera, that is the drama in the ideal. Or it 
should be. Ah, just think what music is— 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


2 I 

only that, only so much of the order of the 
universe as we are able to receive. We, im¬ 
potent creatures, trying to pierce ether with 
our lenses and heaven with our fancies, 
thinking we would recognize the song of the 
morning-stars if we heard it ! Well, the as¬ 
tronomers may point their glasses, and the 
microscope men may search for the ultimate 
atom till time ends, but they will never get 
so near the heart of things, the essential 
word, the secret of spirit, while they are in 
the body, as they get when listening to 
great music—ah, my God, when singing 
it ! ” clasping her hands passionately. She 
turned full upon Domina then. “Well,” 
she said, “ show me what you can do. You 
are going to be a player? Do you know 
what that means? Do you know that the 
art of playing is all the arts in one ? Can 
you lift your throat like Niobe ? Can your 
arms droop till the lost ones of the Venus di 
Milo could do no more? Can you poise a 
foot as Canova’s Dancing Girl does ? Is 
your every movement a curve as sure as the 


22 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


Greek line and as pure as the Greek line 
cut in marble? And for the painting— 
perhaps, too, you think color means the 
mere damask on your cheek, the ivory of 
your forehead, the scarlet of your lip, the 
dyes of your dress ? No ! Those are neces¬ 
sary properties—the trace of neutral tint 
that makes you haggard, the blush that 
makes you young. Nor is it that in your¬ 
self, and in your garments, their contrasts, 
their accords, you shall charm the eye and 
satisfy the scene, and be a picture. That, 
too, is necessary. But beyond it all there is 
to be about the whole of your play an at¬ 
mosphere, a bloom, for which there is no 
other word than color, which you yourself 
are to feel, and before another does, and 
without which your painting is a daub ! ” 
Domina looked at her transfixed. The 
parrot took his head from under his wing 
and gave her an uncanny stare with one 
eye before he tucked it back again. “ And 
do you think,” resumed the Madama, “ that 
the tone of your voice is all the music your 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


2 3 


part calls for, its purity, its truth to tune, its 
flexibility and obedience and sweetness, or 
the fioriture with which you surround your 
phrase like the foliation round armorial bear¬ 
ings ? Beyond even that is the effect of 
music made in the harmony, the concur¬ 
rence of the whole thing. And when that 
is done, when sculpture, painting, music, 
have their satisfaction, Playing has not been 
touched ; the chief of all, Playing; because it 
is the humanity of all, the knowledge and 
experience and representation of all the pas¬ 
sions, the heat that stirs, the fire that welds, 
the spirit that creates—sculpture, painting, 
music; they are all the mere elements till 
this creative spirit of life kindles the spark, 
breathes into it, blows through it the fire of 
the Holy Ghost! ” 

“How can you talk so!” exclaimed 
Domina, frightened out of herself. 

“Aha! Now I see something of you! 
I have startled you from your fashion-plate. 
I arrest you, and the spirit flutters into 
sight. There is no life but is of the spirit!” 


24 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


she thundered, so that Domina quailed. 

4 ‘And any art that is not filled with it is 
inanimate, is dead, a corrupt thing, a stench 
in the nostril of the higher powers of whom 
all art is only the exposition. There are 
some people, ’ * said the Madama then more 
gently, bending forward and still holding 
the girl with her glittering eye, “ who deny 
those higher powers altogether. But*there 
are some who see their manifestation in the 
beauty of the world; some who worship in 
music and need no other communion; and 
there are some who find God in humanity, 
who find all they know of him through the 
revelations that are made by those whose 
souls are filled, oh, not made drunk, but ex¬ 
alted into absolute life, with the beauty that 
is born of all phases of color, of line, of 
landscape, of music, of humanity. I am one 
of these, for I worship God in art, and it is 
not art if it is not full of the Holy Ghost! ’ ’ 
Domina looked helplessly toward Gratian, 
and rose rather breathlessly to her feet. 
“ I—I think I must go,” she said. 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


25 

But Gratian did not stir. A trace of 
amusement in bis manner seemed to bid her 
wait. 

“ Come, come,” said the Madama, in 
quite another tone, “ see what a folly it is 
to be an enthusiast! Sit down—Arline is 
bringing out tea. I have had too much al¬ 
ready. ’ ’ 

“ One gets as drunk with tea as with 
beauty?” asked Gratian. 

“One gets a Buddhist ecstasy with the 
eyes so long on any fixed point. Now I 
suppose your young friend wants no more of 
me—even my tea. You look like a startled 
fawn, my girl; a startled young she-creature. 
Never mind—I have said my say. I don’t 
suppose you have lived long enough yet to 
know that to say is not to seal. Charity is 
of slow growth; youth is another name for 
bigotry. It is inhospitable to ideas. And 
yet youth, youth, it is the spring-board ! It 
is full of impetus, it is force itself! Well, 
well—what did Gratian say your name was, 
my dear ? ” 


26 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


“ I said it was a capital stage name,” 
said Gratian, leaning back his long, lazy 
length. “ Or you did. As good as a dis¬ 
guise. ’ ’ 

“The real name makes no difference,” 
said the Madama. “ The personality should 
make no difference. The individual should 
be lost in art. Call him Number One, or 
A, or Z.” 

“ Or N. G.,” said Gratian. 

‘‘ Why do you say this to me ? ’ * said 
Domina, abruptly. ‘ ‘ I am not going on 
the stage. ’ ’ 

“No?” said Gratian. “Art will be 
lost in the individual, then.” 

“ Is there, then, nothing in the world but 
art?” said Domina impatiently, pushing 
back the little Meissen cup sparkling with 
flowers like inlaid gems. “ No—I don’t 
take tea. ’ ’ 

“You will take something worse then 
soon. No, poor child, there are only two 
things in the world. There is science— 
that is the knowledge of nature; and there 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


27 


is art—that is the interpretation of nature. 
The one attempts, with mines and counter¬ 
mines ; the other soars and is there. And 
for the rest there is rust ! ” said the Ma- 
dama. “You take tea to-night, Gratian ? ” 

“I refuse nothing that is good,” said 
Gratian. 

“You live altogether in this world, do 
you not, Gratian ? ’ ’ said the Madama, sud¬ 
denly. 

“It is what I am here for, I suppose,” 
said Gratian. 

“I don’t!” said Domina. “You are 
here to feed the growth of your soul-’ ’ 

“ Thanks. Not any in mine. I like to 
know what I feed on. Besides — when 
you’re not sure you have a soul,” and he 
looked mischievously at Domina leaning 
against a pillar of the porch and drawing a 
branch of the honeysuckle down about her 
face. 

“Mr. Gratian,” said she, “ do you see 
the afterglow ? ’ ’ 

“ By George ! ” said he, starting up with 



2 8 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


its light on his face. “ It’s the atmosphere 
of another star ! 1 ’ 

“And it is not a soul which feels 
that?” 

“ * How much more elder art thou than 
thy looks ! ’ You don’t see such splendor 
as this, Madama, cast up from the mists of a 
bay on your city rooms-” 

“ I like it better when art has en¬ 
tered-’ ’ 

“ Art again,” said Gratian, with his half 
laugh. 

44 And why not art again and art for¬ 
ever? ” cried the Madama. “ Why not art 
as well as nature ? Tell me where did 
nature wear richer beauty than in the land 
of art, a land of mountains penetrated by 
the sea, wrapped in a firmament of silvery 
blue, everywhere the great hills, everywhere 
the great sea, everywhere the great sky, so 
lifted, so lovely, that everywhere the gods 
walked abroad in it! Where there grew a 
perfect people with a perfect language, who 
breathed breath into marble, whose thought 




A MASTER SPIRIT 


2 9 


lived on the plane of great temples, whose 
poems were the voice of the elements them¬ 
selves, and whose drama is full of the passion 
of men and the power of gods ! ” 

“ And the marbles are gone, the music is 
gone, and the painting is gone,” said 
Gratian, with a grin. 

“ Their gods are gone ! ” cried Domina, 
turning, her face dark in the shadow. 

“ But the drama is immortal! ” exclaimed 
the older woman. “And it is always the 
drama that survives. For the drama is the 
story of the race; and we do not accept it if 
it is not true, true to our knowledge of men, 
true to our ideals of gods. And to save the 

drama is to save-’ ’ 

“Art,” said Gratian, with mischief. 

11 Humanity ! ’ ’ said the Madama. 

“At any rate, a certain portion of hu¬ 
manity, to whom princes toss bracelets worth 
a duchy, and for whom the box-office holds 
managers’ checks with city blocks and 
lands and castles and the flocks upon a 
thousand hills, over the face of them.” 



30 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


“ All that is not worth the heart-beat of 
one great hand-clapping ! ” 

“ But that,” said Domina, “ is only a 
matter of personal vanity. 5 * 

“ How much you have to learn, poor 
child ! It is the blood of the whole people 
coursing through you, it is feeling not only 
that you are at your own best and highest, 
but that, leading thousands with action and 
reaction, you are lifted to the top of all 
that they can feel.” 

“ You could have shown even those old 
Greeks a thing or two, Madama.” 

“Oh, to have had the chance!” she 
cried, her eyesunclosing in a blaze. “In 
those theatres open to the sky, with the blue 
^Egean for background, with the piercing 
flutes and cithers and choral cries, saturated 
with sunshine, all nature to friend ! With 
what blackness of shadow I would have 
shrouded Electra, with what brilliancy and 
light of heaven I would have revealed Al- 
cestis ! Give me some sugar in my tea—oh, 
it’s a bitter cup I’ve brewed myself! And 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


31 


to think that you could do all I would if I 
might/’ she cried, turning suddenly to 
Domina, “and will not! Think of your¬ 
self as Iphigenie, with all the hoarse-throated 
Greeks shouting at you, tossing you wreaths 
of cyclamen, branches of olive, crocuses 
breaking like flames under your feet ! 
Think of the great spirits of iEschylus and 
Sophocles, and Euripides over there in 
ghostland, throwing you their glad viewless 
garlands—oh, pshaw ! I’ve no patience 
with you ! ” 

“ But Domina is having a great deal of 
patience with you,” laughed Gratian. 
“What does she want with a Greek play? 
She will have a play written for her, where 
she can leap ashore from the Mayflower as 
Mary Chilton, wasn’t it? or die as Lady 
Arbella, or perhaps—you couldn’t drama¬ 
tize the decalogue or the beatitudes— Now 
you are offended ! ’ ’ 

“Mr. Gratian,” said Domina with sim¬ 
plicity, obliged to sustain herself, “ you 
know that is wicked-” 



3 2 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


“ It is you that are wicked ! ” suddenly 
screamed the Madama. “ It is you who 
have had a great gift given you for a specif¬ 
ic purpose, and who stand up in the face of 
the giver and refuse to use the gift! You 
who might swing multitudes up or down, to 
right or left, exalt them or abase them— 
and you say No ! you prefer a church cha¬ 
rade, a pastoral tableau, anything . in the 
vestry ; you who bury your talent in a nap¬ 
kin, who presume to know better than God, 
who prefer the vapid smile of some poor, 
pale young minister, fresh from his seminary, 
knowing something of books and nothing of 
life-” 

“ Oh ! wait till you see him ! ” laughed 
Gratian. 

“ Prefer that to the world’s approval, to 
Shakespeare’s gratitude. God gave you a 
power. He meant it to do a work-” 

“Madama,” said Domina, “how do 
you know what God meant ? And you do 
not believe in God.” 

“It is an audacious hussy!” said the 




A MASTER SPIRIT 


33 


Madama, with a laugh then. “There is 
no one who does not believe in God. 
There are some whose brains are too feeble 
to cope with the idea, and they let it alone. 
Like Gratian, they live here. And how do 
I know what God meant ? How do I know 
that you have a power ? Justify me ! Show 
it to me ! Sing something ! ’ ’ 

“ I—sing to you ! ” said Domina. 

“Not an aria,” said the Madama, a lit¬ 
tle less imperiously now. “ Scales, rather 
than nothing.” 

“ She can build up the whole thing from 
a scale,” said Gratian. “Ex pede Hercu- 
lem, and p. d. q., too.” 

“Well, then,” thought Domina. “To 
put a stop to the whole thing and get 
away! ’ ’ 

“ Any every-day song you sing as you go 
about the house, ’ ’ said the Madama. 

The girl looked out into the falling twi¬ 
light a moment, and then remembering 
something the Madama had said, lifted her 
voice. 


3 


34 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


“ When I left thy shores, O Naxos, 

Not a tear in sorrow fell, 

Not a sigh or faltering accent 

Spoke my bosom’s struggling swell. 

Yet my heart sank deep within me, 

And I waved a hand as cold, 

When I thought thy shores, O Naxos, 

I should never more behold ! ” 

Nothing was more simple. There were 
about two minutes by the dock between 
silence and silence. And then Gratian was 
lying back quite pale, and the Madama had 
sprung forward, her shawls dropping from 
her, and had fallen half upon her knee, 
seizing the girl’s hand, and with a great 
sob, “Oh!” she cried. “It is divine. 
It has the splendor of large illimitable sea 
and sky ! It is the tragedy of Byron and a 
breaking heart! ’ ’ 

Domina drew her hand quickly away; 
and the Madama stood up. “You doubt 
if God gives you the power ? ’ ’ she cried. 
“ You will have to answer to Him for it at 
the Day of Judgment! ” And she went 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


35 


into the house, pulling her shawls after her, 
Fido waking, angry and dejected, and fol¬ 
lowing her, the angora spitting like any 
common cat in the confusion. 

“ And what do you think of art now ? ” 
said Gratian, as they went out the gate. 

“ What a very singular old woman,” said 
Domina. 

“ Yes. She has an eleventh book of the 
sibyls. They would have called her a 
prophetess once.” 

“ I should not like to see much of her,” 
said Domina, poising her oar again on her 
shoulder. 

“ The quality of rural virtue ! If you 
were as good a woman as the Madama ! She 
typifies the sin of the world come to your 
sanctuary, I suppose. Well, if your vir¬ 
tue is not strong enough for that strain, it is 
not good for much. Yes, you must go to 
her again and often. That comes within 
what you call your service. It was while 
you were in the way of that service, wasn’t 
it, carrying broth to that old fishing man 


36 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


who broke his leg in my boat, that you met 
me? God, how he swore ! Isn’t that what 
you good folk call a ‘ leading ? ’ Yes, you 
must go to her. You see she is a very un¬ 
happy woman. The least that you can do 
is to lend her of your youth and strength. 
You must forgive her—she sees her young 
days and her possibilities over again in you. 
Honeysuckle is fragrant, by Jove ! I shall 
always think of it hanging from the rocks 
of Naxos, if Naxos has any rocks. You are 
carrying its breath all about you now! 
How low the stars hang to-night,” he said, 
swinging his oar. “How still the air is— 
there isn’t any dew—suppose we go back 
to the river—just to lie out there between 
the stars and the water as if we were a part 
of the heavens ? That is the way lovers 
feel, don’t they?” he said, daringly. 
“ No ? It wouldn’t do ? I am always urg¬ 
ing you to something you ought not ? Go 
in and think it over, and see if you can dis¬ 
cern where the sin would be in sitting in 
the stern of a boat I rowed and looking at 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


37 


the unobstructed stars. Good-night, my 
lady ! * ’ And he turned from her garden 
gate, giving her the oar, and went down 
singing a little barcarolle. She stood listen¬ 
ing till the voice was only an echo and had 
ceased, had half the mind to answer him 
with a boat-song of her own, but kept si¬ 
lence, stayed a moment leaning on the gate 
and looking at the stars, and then went in 
with a sigh. 


Gratian sauntered up that way the next 
morning. “ ‘ In summer, when the days 
were long/ ” he hummed as he saw Domina 
in her garden. A brook went slipping 
through the wide enclosure, its surface here 
purple-blue as the enamel on the wings of a 
wasp, and there breaking in a sprinkle of 
bubbles ; a great beech wet its feet there, 
and now and then the brook bayed out to 
edge itself with blue arrow-heads and the 
golden balls of the cow-lilies; then it disap¬ 
peared under the wall and joined the larger 
brook running down hill, between the birch 
thickets, on its way to the river. In the long 
grass-plot the sun fell in a dazzle of emerald, 
and every leaf of the laurel-bush glittered, 
every tiptoe blossom of the sweet-pea trellis, 
in a luxuriance of early summer. A song- 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


39 


sparrow dropped its warble from a high 
bough of the huge skirting pines, and the 
heavenly fragrance of the first roses swept 
along on every pulse of the soft wind. 

Domina had been dancing with a slow 
rhythmic motion down the grass, shut in 
from the world and all unguessed, spending 
an idle hour before the minister should 
come with work for her to do, unconscious¬ 
ly, and in the pure joy of living. She was 
singing Come la brezza , in a voice like a 
great flute, full of sweetness, of the gladness 
of innocence and youth, of sunshine and 
south winds and perfume, taking the time 
slowly as she went swinging in long circles 
of waving pendulous grace, with the sun 
and shade breaking over her. 

How beautiful she was, as Gratian, having 
leaped the low wall, looked at her through 
the hemlock boughs that shut the garden in 
on that side—where few people passed, any 
way — tall, rounded, sculpturesque, dark 
without other color than that of the ruddy 
lips, the black hair smooth above the broad, 


40 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


low ivory brow, the black lashes lifted from 
eyes as clear as blue diamonds are, the smile 
of exquisite content ! And how doubly 
beautiful, in her unconsciousness, as she 
went bending and turning to the measure, 
with swaying form and arching arms. 

‘ 1 If I had her before the lights in that 
self-forgetfulness, in that dance ! ” he mur¬ 
mured. And he thought less of the 'fortune 
in her, that moment, than of the satisfaction 
of the perception of the lovely, the grand¬ 
iose. “ If I had the Madama here ! ” 

But after a few moments he had stooped 
under the hemlock boughs, parting and 
sweeping them aside, and had come out 
upon the open green. And before Domina 
could stay her motion he had taken her 
hand and thrown an arm lightly about her, 
had taken the tune with her, accelerating 
the measure, and was waltzing down the 
green and back again, whirling ever swifter 
and more swift, and up to the door-stone of 
the low-browed old house at last. 

Someone called her from within—a voice 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


4i 


that sounded as if it came out of a down 
cushion. Domina tore herself free, and 
turned on him, towering, and with flashing 
eyes. “ How dared you—” she began. 

Gratian laughed. 4 ‘ That is right,” he 
said. “ That is superb ! That is Norma, 
that is the Jewess ! But it is not you. It 
is equally good personation, though. For 
you are not at all angry in reality, you 
know. You liked it, you thought it was 
delightful! ” 

Domina waited a moment, and then she 
laughed. “Yes,” she said, “it was de¬ 
lightful.” 

“ And who taught you to waltz ? ” 

“Waltz?” she said. “Oh, of course 
that was waltzing. ’ ’ 

“ No one taught you, then. The inner 
harmony of your soul and sense made your 
feet move to the music. Corybantic genius, 
the Madama would tell you, alone has that 
harmony. You think waltzing is a sin? 
It is more a sin to disregard the leading 
of nature, as you do—nature who has a mes- 


42 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


sage to give the world through you, and you 
persist in remaining mute, or in singing to 
boors and bumpkins ! ’ * 

“ Do you know,” she said, winding up 
her loosened hair, “it is really unkind in 
you to flatter me so. You will turn my 
head. And then you unfit me for my life. ’ ’ 
“I am not flattering you. Your head is 
not so weak as to be turned. I would fit 
you for a different life, oh, a life of fire, of 
high excitements and achievements ! If I 
went into a house and found the children 
playing with diamonds thinking that they 
were bits of glass, ought I not to tell them, 
I who know? And your life isn’t to be 
here. I don’t know how you came to be 
here. What strange play of atoms set the 
jewel in this foreign matrix? It is like find¬ 
ing some pearl of the Orient in the common 
clam-shell of this coast. Jove! it is like 
hearing a strain of the vast oversong, as the 
Madama calls the rote here, pushing up 
these shallow coves.” 

‘ ‘ These coves are not so shallow. ’ ’ 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


43 


“ Deep enough to drown a man? Tell 
me, Domina, ’ ’ he said, leaning against the 
doorway with a smile on his dark thin face, 
“ do you feel more wicked now, for having 
waltzed, than you were before? ” 

* 4 It was wrong. ’ ’ 

“ Only that is wrong which is wrong for 
us. Right and wrong are relative.” 

“ No. Right and wrong are fixed.” 

11 So are black and white, you may say. 
But they are black and white only in rela~ 
tion to light, atmosphere, situation, object. 
If you would only abandon yourself! Come 
la brezza ,” sang Gratian again. And then 
he was whirling down the turf with her. 

Breathless, flushed, smiling, with her hair 
fallen round her in a cloud, Domina stopped 
at last under the canopy of a broad beech 
bough where the sunshine sifted through 
upon her, binding up the long sweep of 
tresses once more, her sleeves falling back 
from her beautiful arms. Then she lifted 
her arms again to Gratian, but dropped 
them as suddenly, and stood laughing, with 


44 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


glowing eyes and glittering teeth, and the 
lovely pallor all suffused with a tint like 
that of a great dewy blush-rose. 

“Well,” she said, “did I let myself go? 
Was that sufficient abandon? ” 

“Almost! ” he exclaimed, his eyes rest¬ 
ing on her with a lingering glance under 
which her own fell. “ Not quite.” 

She turned away presently with* an im¬ 
perious gesture, as of one throwing off un¬ 
welcome finery. 

“ Come, Domina,” said Gratian, then, 
moving on by her side, “ we will go under 
the shadow and you shall tell me what you 
were doing this morning before you found 
yourself so glad you were alive. ’ ’ 

She looked at him askance. “ I don’t 
know that I am glad I am alive,” she said. 

“Iam glad you are,” he said. 

1 ‘ What was I doing ? ’ ’ she repeated 
quickly. “Well, I have been having,” she 
said, laughing an instant, “ interviews with 
certain people of importance. A prince 
was one of them. He said to me, ‘The 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


45 


trees of the Lord are full of sap.’ I think 
David sang that first on such a day as this. ’ ’ 
“ And then? ” said Gratian, impatiently. 
4 4 And then ? Well, later on Will Shake¬ 
speare had a word to say to me about 
wild music burthening every bough. That 
is to say, not to my ear alone—anyone was 
free to hear. After that Mr. Browning had 
a moment for me, a moment for me alone, 
you know, because he left it entirely to me 
to understand it in my own way. I don’t 
suppose you know who Mr. Browning is? ” 
said Domina, archly. 

“Why not? It is my business to read 
dramatic literature. I don’t suppose any¬ 
one but you yourself could ever play Brown¬ 
ing—and make a success of it. ’ ’ 

“Oh, do you think I could?” cried 
Domina, clasping her hands and suddenly 
turning on him her jewel eyes. “To be 
Lady Carlisle ! To be Colomba, Mildred, 
and Aniel—Aniel! Oh, I have it all before 
me ! To breathe life— But what nonsense ! 
I ! And then, of course-’ ’ 



46 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


Instead of answering her, Gratian bent 
forward to catch her gaze again, and began 
singing, 

“ I send my heart up to thee, all my heart, 

In this my singing.” 

And what was Domina to do but reply, as 
she had so often imagined it to herself, in 
impassioned recitative and the melody of the 
“ Moth’s Kiss ; ” and as Gratian tossed back 
again the golden ball of song, “ As of old I am 
I, Thou art Thou,” with the dreamy musing, 

“ Oh, which were best, to roam or rest? 

The land’s lap or the water’s breast ? ” 

to meet him again in music in “ Death’s to 

fear from flame or steel,” with spontaneous 

adaptation of old tunes to words, Gratian 

never suffering the note to fall till the end, 

when he lay breathing between faint gasps : 

“ And best 

Comes now, beneath thine eyes, and on thy breast. 
Still kiss me ! Care not for the cowards ! Care 
Only to put aside thy beauteous hair 
My blood will hurt ! The Three I do not scorn 
To death, because they never lived : but I 
Have lived indeed, and so—yet one more kiss— 

Can die ! ” 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


47 


There on the velvet grass, in the sun-bathed 
air, under soft azure and white cloud, with 
birds darting and bees humming, for that 
brief space it was Venice and midnight, and 
passion and despair. 

A moment or two Domina still knelt 
there. Then she sprang to her feet. “ Oh, 
why did you make me do it! ” she ex¬ 
claimed, before she had found her breath. 
“ Why did you let me do it! ” 

“ Yes,” said Gratian. “ That was aban¬ 
don itself. I expect reaction. Let you do 
it ? Could you help doing it ? It is just 
what I have been talking about—it’s the 
dramatic instinct in you, seizing you, hav¬ 
ing its way !—Domina,” he said, after a 
little silence, leaning on his elbow as he lay 
along the grass, “ I don’t know how you 
have managed it, but you have very little to 
learn: some small matters of technique, 
merely, that the Madama shall give you.” 

“Did she teach you?” said Domina, 
unable to be angry under that gaze of Gra¬ 
tian ’s. “ I am—yes, I am. sure I should 


48 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


never have gone out of myself so if you had 
not called me. Did no one ever say to you 
‘ How well you do it ? ’ ” 

“ Oh, yes, I do a little of everything— 
sing a little; play, as you see,” waving the 
slim, brown hand. “ Everything a little, 
nothing well. If I could make sustained 
effort I should not be managing, I should be 
managed for. I miss the spark, you see. 
You have it. I know why I do everything. 
That might be the greater art, if only the 
flame were there behind the mask, the gen¬ 
ius to inform the whole thing, you know. ’ ’ 
Domina stood warm and glowing in the 
sunshine, her hands clasped behind her 
head, and the sky painted in the eyes look¬ 
ing straight before her. “I think,” said 
she, “ I must ask you not to come here any 

more. You must not think it rude-” 

“ What odds what I think ! ” said Gra- 
tian, rising and confronting her. 

“ I mean,” she said, gravely, “ I mean 
that you are a very demoralizing com¬ 
panion-’ ’ 




A MASTER SPIRIT 


49 


“ Like all the play-acting fellows.” 

“ For me—only for me ! ” 

“ And I must not think it rude ? ” 

“ You make me do the things I do not 
want to do, I want not to do ! The things 
I disapprove of. Oh, not that I have any 
such reason ! I suppose, I know—that the 
theatre—oh, I never said it is not all well 
enough! But it is wrong for me, it is 
wrong for me! ” 

“ Domina, why is it wrong for you?” 
said Gratian, gently. 

“ I had rather you were angry with me,” 
she said, imperiously. 

But he only smiled, his eyes sparkling 
back the light that struck across them. 
“Why?” he said. 

“ Because it is like a fire ! A devouring 
fire! It burns up everything else. It 
burns up all my habits and beliefs, my sense 
of decency, my life-long convictions. I 
forget all the world, my duties, my plans, 
my endeavors, my prayers. ’ ’ 

“ Do you really think all the women on 
4 


5o 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


the stage do that?” still looking at her 
with a sort of sweet gravity. 

“ No, oh no ! Only I should. I should 
be false to everyone’s hopes for me, false to 
myself. I cannot let myself be swept away 
so. It is exactly like the drunkard letting 
himself be mastered by wine. I must put 
that cup by, pour it out. A little talent, a 
talent to amuse—what is that-” 

“A gift,” with careless intonation, “of 
the kind, I suppose, given for nothing.” 

“ What is that beside the work that is set 
for me to do, that I have undertaken to do ? ” 

“Here in this parish? With the minis¬ 
ter?” said Gratian, somewhat pale. And 
she wavered back a step, and went on up 
the grass toward the house without saying 
good-by. 

But he kept along beside her. “ Domi- 
na,” he said, “ can you and I be as near as 
we were ten minutes since and yet be no 
nearer ? ’ ’ 

“ That is the same thing again ! One is 
as near to every lover in every play.” 



A MASTER SPIRIT 


5i 


“ That sort of contact ! ” he said. “ But 
the other ! the flash of spirit to spirit ! ” 
“You are not sure, you know, that you 
believe there is spirit,” she said. 

He laughed. “ Oh, I believe it now,” 
he answered. “You are certainly a spir¬ 
it! ” And he lifted his hat and was gone, 
only to meet at the gate a tall young ath¬ 
lete who carried a stick as if it were a wand 
seeking hidden treasure of gold or water- 
springs, and who, in spite of wide-open, 
sightless eyes, looked half like a Visigoth and 
half like St. John with his eagle. 

“ But you will not see Domina,” thought 
Gratian, after he had passed the minister. 
“ For, unless I am mistaken in women, she 
has gone upstairs to cry. ’ * 

“ Gratian,” said the Madama, when he 
went into her little sitting-room an hour or 
two later, stumbling over the angora and 
the dog, in the half light, “you look as if 
you had seen a ghost! ’ ’ 

“I have,” he said, throwing himself 


5 2 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


down on the straw lounge. “I have seen 
several. The ghosts of a procession of 
godly grandmothers; the ghost of a girl 
heart-broken if she gratifies her nature at the 
cost of her—prejudices ; the ghost of a new 
prima donna receding into dim distance; 
the ghost of a yellow-haired young Anak of 
a minister—an Anak gone blind ; the ghost, 
too, the ghost I had thought lain—some¬ 
thing—something—not that hate of the Ver¬ 
onese who let ‘ the silent luxury trickle slow 
about the hollows where a heart should be,’ 
but—but-’ ’ 

“ Gratian ! ” 

“ Yes, Madama. I think I had best get 
away from here.” 

44 Gratian,’’ said the Madama, with a 
glance like the flash of a black diamond, 

‘ ‘ how old are you ? ’ ’ 

“Old enough to know better,” said Gra¬ 
tian. 

There was a long silence, silence that at 
last the cockatoo broke with a screech and 
an unearthly laugh. The Madama leaned 



A MASTER SPIRIT 


53 


forward and touched a bell. “Put that 
bird in the dark,” she said, as the maid ap¬ 
peared. ‘ ‘ And make my boxes ready. 
Make them ready at once ! * ’ And then as 
the door closed, “ I might have known 
when I came here at your bidding that I 
could as reasonably have set out for some 
spot east of the sun ! ’ * 

“ Madama! ” exclaimed Gratian, sitting 
up. “You are not going to leave me 
now? ” 

“You are going yourself. You said so.” 

“Did I? That was some time ago,” 
said Gratian. 


IV 


Domina was combing out her hair that 
night, as the nine o’clock evening bells came 
pealing up from the town. They found an 
echo against a screen of woods beyond, that 
scattered them to a fairy flock of tones at 
large among the sombre boughs. They had 
hardly gone diminishing in distance, when a 
voice—how different—a rich full human 
strain, but in the same key, came floating up 
from the stream hidden in the steep banks 
behind the garden and its retaining-wall, 
and winding down to the broad river. It 
was Gratian, who had been whipping the 
brook for trout, and was going home along 
its edge, rod in hand, trolling the catch of 
something in his memory. 

“ O hail me that bright craft, To-morrow ! 

Hail, hail her, Ahoy ! Ship ahoy ! 

O tell me the secret of sorrow, 

And what is the measure of joy ! ” 


A MASTER SPIRIT 55 

Domina turned to the window to lean out 
and take the pleasantness of the voice, or as 
if her first impulse were to answer it. But 
as quickly she sprang back and hid her 
face in her loose hair, and stood there quiv¬ 
ering and tingling till all was still again. 
Then she blew out her light and sat in the 
dark, the heavy night fragrance of the helio¬ 
tropes rolling in about her. If she only 
knew how to lose herself telling the beads of 
a rosary ! Could she do as much conjuring 
before her mind’s eye a face, the face that 
looked at her from her picture of St. John 
and his eagle, the face that every Sunday she 
saw in the desk opposite the singing-seats, the 
face to which all the year she had been sing¬ 
ing, thinking she sang to heaven? Then 
in a gust of tears she was conscious of the in¬ 
jury tears wrought the voice. “ I wish they 
would! ’ ’ she cried. “ I wish they would ruin 
it! And then—” And then, what? She 
did not know herself, except with that dull 
instinct which is terror. Only more tears and 
tears, and at last in the middle of them sleep. 


56 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


Yet in the morning the tears had left no 
huskiness in the pure tones, and she sang 
the chant in church as if, as Gratian said, 
she was a trumpet and the angel of the 
Lord were blowing through it. Gratian had 
strolled into church just before that chant; 
but Domina had not seen him when she 
rose; she saw only the white face of Mr. 
Johns, as he sat in the pulpit opposite her, 
his head resting slightly on his hand and 
his eyes looking out and seeing nothing— 
the face of a man blind to this world, full- 
visioned to another. 

As she sang, she raised her eyes and noted 
the blue sky in the bare window above his 
head; and she thought of the paved work 
of a sapphire as it were the body of heaven 
in its clearness, and for a moment her soul 
seemed to go out of her in her song. And 
then, as her glance fell and rested on the 
minister again, she remembered the old 
Wanderer, 

“ And in the silence of his face I read 
His overflowing spirit,” 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


57 


and knew that her voice was like wings to 
him, and that his thought soared with it 
into broad heaven-knowing heights. He 
needs me, he needs me, the feeling ran 
through her like a thrill; and a passion of 
renunciation, of sacrifice, of will, breathed 
in her tones. She knew what the voice had 
done for him when in the prayer he seemed 
also to lift the hearts of all the people into 
the atmosphere archangels breathe, and in 
the words spoken afterward to hold them 
there. 

“ It’s the music opens the gates of heaven 
to him,” said an old woman in the porch as 
they came out. 

“ It’s not him that has to have help at all 
opening the gates,” said another. “But 
it’s as if the sight of heaven had dazzled him 
blind long ago.” 

Domina heard them; she remembered the 
minister had once said to her that the story 
of the walls of Thebes rising to the touch of 
Amphion’s lyre was no myth to him, for 
when she sang he saw the city descending 


58 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


out of heaven from God. “ And Jericho/ * 
he had said, at another time, “ is not the last 
fortress of evil to fall before the shrilling of 
trumpets.” And she could do that for him, 
who did so much for all this region round 
—not alone for the ancient village here 
on the hill, where everyone called everyone 
else by name, and where primitive and sim¬ 
ple life and tradition met much of-its own 
spiritual need, but for the town on the shore 
below, with its foundries and workshops and 
warehouses and mills, and where he went 
about, fearless in his blindness, and taught 
the rough beings there what the stature of a 
man might be before heaven. 

Sometimes she had gone with him, she 
and others. She had sung in the little 
chapel-meetings till the place was thronged 
with those whom the minister, speaking 
with pentecostal fervor, led into the new 
life. And she had sung in the squares at 
night beside him, under the torches of the 
Salvation Army and to the summoning of 
its drums, her voice filling the hollow of the 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


59 


dark sky as if it led into light, one by one, 
the other voices clustering round it, the 
spirit running through the crowd like fire, 
till, for a song’s while they seemed all to be 
journeying together into some vast unknown 
joy. And if the fire fell to ashes, still here 
and there a spark may have burst into steady 
flame ; and there was always memory of the 
time to hover round the wild and wayward 
with a blessing on its wings. And again, 
she had gone with him to the sick and 
suffering, who hardly knew was it his prayer 
or her hymn, a prayer in song, gave them 
most cheer; and singing softly beside the 
dying, where he knelt, her voice had seemed 
to them nothing less than an angel in the 
room, leading them out, and then, not only 
the minister, but she herself, had seemed for 
a while to follow on the way they went. 

Well—and to leave all this work—could 
Heaven itself give sweeter—to leave this 
companionship, to leave this blind apostle 
for the sake- 

“ Almost thou persuadest me to be a 



6 o 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


Christian,” said a voice in her ear, and 
Gratian was going along beside her. “ Do 
you know,” he said, “ when a man has had 
no chance, when he was born he knows not 
where, he knows not of whom, when he 
never saw his mother, and the old Madama 
there was the nearest thing he had; when he 
seldom had sweeter air to breathe than that 
behind the scenes, between the flies'; there 
is something as unreal to him about all this 
simple life here as there is to you about the 
play? And when I hear this man of yours 
preaching—no, I can’t call it preaching— 
but it lifts it all into exaggerated heights, till I 
feel just as one feels when singing the staves 
of the Volsungs and the Valkyrie—as if in the 
company and the region of gods, you see.” 

“ I never saw the Valkyrie,” said Domi- 
na. “ But there are times when I feel that 
here is God himself.” 

“ I dare say. So might I, if I were long 
with you.” 

She made him no reply, but kept on down 
the hill. 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


61 


“ Where are you going? ” he asked. 

“ To see the Madama.” 

“ I am glad of that. She wants you. I 
came to tell you so.” 

“ I mean—to say to her that I cannot 
see her any more. ’ ’ 

“ You make confession,” he said. “ The 
ideas she sets before you are so alluring you 
fear you may yield. Or—Domina—is it— 
Do not fear me,” he said gently, glancing 
at her under the drooping lids. “ If you 
wish, I will go away. I am an incarnation 
of the evil possible to human kind, am I 
not? You renounce it — the world, the 
flesh, and the devil. What an Elizabeth 
you would make! My God, could I have a 
greater joy than a voice to sing Tannhauser 
to your Elizabeth ! ” 

Domina began to sing softly to herself. 
“ I don’t hear what you say,” she stopped 
long enough to declare. He laughed then. 

“ But you will not be so cruel to the 
Madama,” he said, bending forward to look 
in her face. ‘ ‘ At least the Madama is one 


6 2 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


of God’s poor, that you good people have 
so much to say about—though why God’s 
poor passes me, by Jove ! And just now 
she is very ill, and needs at least the care 
you would give some wretch not fit to stand 
before her. She has caught cold here in 
this region of the gods—the air is too rare 
for her, you see—that, and this river-breath 
and sea-fog together. Get the Madama well 
for me, and we will go away together and 
see you no more, Domina; we will leave 
you to your narrowness, your content with 
the day of small things, your colossal vanity 
that lets you think you are one of the heav¬ 
enly host going on the divine errands and 
carrying out the divine purposes in the 
world ! Go on, looking for your work in 
byways and back alleys, when the message 
you have to deliver is in your throat and 
you refuse to utter it! ” And he plunged 
down the side-path to the river and his 
boat, and left her to go on alone to the 
Madama. 

It was quite true; the Madama was ill. 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


63 


She had had some slight cold or indiges¬ 
tion ; but disappointed, disheartened, dreary, 
an attack of the blues was not new with the 
Madama. And for the rest, Domina had 
never seen a crise de nerfs. Arline was giving 
her a drink, and crying, as forlorn herself as 
the Madama. “ I want music,” sighed the 
sufferer. “Go away with your tisane! I 
shall die if I can hear no music ! Just pure 
music ! Voi die sapete / * ’ And then she 
began to sing, in a strange half-voice of 
pathetic tenderness, a ballad of Heine’s, 

“ But when thou sayest thou lovest me, 

I fall to weeping bitterly,” 

and Domina felt as if her heart would break 
hearing her. She shut the door softly and 
sat down near the foot of the bed. It did 
not seem to her that she would dare to sing 
herself after that tragedy of passion. 

“If Gratian were here!” sighed the 
Madama. “ He would quiet me. He 
would give me some melody that would set 
these damnable nerves of mine quivering to 


6 4 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


time and tune. He would sing Spirito 
gentil. But no, no, no, he is away, wasting 
himself with that girl who has no soul! ” 
And her hand beat up and down upon the 
coverlet. 

Then there came a soft low note to the 
Madama’s ear, a sound at first as if only the 
wind in the swaying branches outside were 
murmuring, and that was presently like a far- 
off flute blown over water, and Domina was 
singing. 

The Madama’s hand was still a moment. 
“ Hymns! ” she said, in a tone of unmeas¬ 
ured disdain. And the restless hand beat up 
and down again. 

But Domina sang on, her voice a swelling 
melodious sigh, Bach’s “ Sighing, mourn¬ 
ing, sorrow, tears.” Plainly, however, this 
was not the music the Madama wanted. 
Domina bethought herself a little while, and 
“ O mes Sceurs,” she sang, and ceased, be¬ 
cause the Madama had closed her burning 
eyes. But at a motion, she began again, 
helped herself by the singing. 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


65 


The Madama’s hand had fallen, the thin 
long yellow hand. “ Sing on, sing on, little 
David,” she said. And grown bolder, Do- 
mina let out her voice at last with ineffable 
sweetness and strength in “ Divinest Mel¬ 
ancholy.” And then she forgot the Ma- 
dama, and that she was singing to her, lured 
on by her own music, and remembered only 
the pleasantness of life as she warbled Pen- 
serosa’s Nightingale Song. 

“ The place is full of other intelli¬ 
gences,” said the Madama, opening her 
eyes. “ Not for me, not for me! They 
are here to hear you sing. What will you 
do in heaven without your throat ! Oh, if 
one sings to angels no wonder that the 
crowds of opera-houses do not signify. This 
is what you do for the sick and dying. Ah, 
well ! I see! Its rewards, its compensa¬ 
tions are great, are actual. Gratian may as 
well go back. Who taught you to use your 
voice ? ’ ’ 

“ I suppose,” said Domina, “ the same 
power that gave it to me. ” 

5 


66 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


“ Pshaw ! No one knows how to sing by 
nature. The great singers with their bub¬ 
bling tones have waded through tears. You 
have had lessons. Someone taught you to 
breathe from below, to open your throat, to 
make the roof of your mouth a sounding- 

board. Someone placed your voice-” 

“ Oh, yes ! She was here a season for 
rest. She died afterward, I have heard. 
She happened to hear me; and then I 
must sing to her; she gave me exercises, 
and would have me practise. It was very 
hard at first; but I have practised ever since 
—I don’t know why.” 

‘ ‘ I do, ’ ’ said the Madama. 

“She gave me the French song I sang 

just now—Madame Dartagneri- ’ 1 

“She!” cried the Madama, springing 
up. “ The broken-down—the dissolute— 
dying of her crimes—she to touch you— 
train your voice ! Ah, what a white flower 
can blow out of a heap of compost ! ” 

“You make me shudder!” said Do- 


rmna. 




A MASTER SPIRIT 67 

“ She ought to have made you shud¬ 
der ! ” 

“ Her cigarettes did.” 

“ Commend me to the broad imagination 
of the narrow mind ! And because you see 
my thumb is brown I am one in your 
thought with the Dartagneri! ” 

“No, no,” said Domina, laughing, yet 
shrinking. “Only when I saw your 
thumb —’ ’ 

“It recalled her painted face!” And 
the Madama began to breathe hard again. 
“ I who serve art! She who served only her 
senses and betrayed art! Alas, ’ ’ said the 
Madama presently, ‘ ‘ she had a perfect 
method.” 

“It has seemed to me,” said Domina, 
timidly, “ that there is something better 
than art to serve. ’ ’ 

“ There is not, then. I have told you— 
but to no purpose. You call it one name. 
I call it another. Art is the interpretation 
of God.” 

“ Yes—I feel that while I am singing to 



68 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


the worshipping, to the dying—when I am 
singing only to myself in the sunshine.” 

“ When you were singing to me just now 
and driving out the seven devils. Is that 
you, Gratian ? ” as someone came into the 
outer room and began playing on the piano 
there a little airy, racing, chasing dance of 
tripping, tumbling harlequins. “ Ah, that 
sounds bright again ! That is rational, that 
is natural! As if there were happiness still 
in the world, whether I have it or not,” 
she said when he had finished. “ It was 
only an attack of nerves I had,” she cried 
again. “And now the ghosts have heard 
the cock-crow. Where is Arline? ” 

“ Soi Espanol, soi Espanol, ” pleaded a 
muffled voice in the cupboard. 

“ There is poor Loro in the dark ! Take 
him out, Gratian. I will be with you 
presently, clothed and in my right mind. 
The girl, Domina, is wise. She is better 
worth singing in a mad-house and bringing 
maniacs to reason, as to-day, than before the 
footlights. She has had no luncheon, or 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


69 


dinner, they call it here in the wilds. 
Neither has Fido, poor dear. We will 
remedy all that ! ” 

And when the Madama came out with 
Domina and all her shawls, Arline was lay¬ 
ing the table, and there was a little banquet 
of dainty rolls and a salad and a bottle of 
wine. “ They could have lived this way in 
Paradise,” said the Madama, “and no 
wrong done. ’ ' 

“Now, Madama,” said Gratian, without 
apparent recollection of his angry parting 
with Domina, “ your miraculous cure shows 
me what more you can do. You can come 
down with Domina and spend an hour this 
soft sunset on the river. Domina will not 
go unless you do. In this exaltation of 
your spirits you can do it. Oh, yes, you 
will. I shall have a trap here, to take you 
down to the wharves in three minutes,” as 
the Madama hesitated. 

“But I do not go on the river on Sun¬ 
day,” said Domina. 

“The Lord should stop the river, and 


7 o 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


put out the sunset because it is Sunday! 
But they are still in evidence. So perhaps 
they were meant to be enjoyed—if anyone 
meant anything. Don’t be a little nun, 
Domina ! Didn’t you just hear me say the 
Madama will not go unless you do ? And 
so much depends on her getting out and 
finding the air does her no hurt.” And 
the Madama’s wraps needed her help; and 
the Madama had her hand on her arm, 
condemning, appealing, commanding; and 
Domina went. 

Gratian was a reckless sailor. There was 
a fine land breeze blowing; and when he 
ran up his sail he made at once for the open 
harbor, narrowly escaping running down 
multitudinous little boats darting like white 
flies over the water. To Domina, accus¬ 
tomed to her cedar oars on the smooth coves 
and bends up-stream, when on shore always 
leading the minister in safe places, never 
taken by him into safety through danger, 
the skimming along from the top of one 
wave to another after they were outside, the 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


7 i 


unknown far away on either hand, was a wild 
excitement. And as they dipped down a 
dark hollow and soared again on a crest 
into the rosy light, while the salt breath 
blew about her and the foam flew over her, 
she began to sing as if she were one of the 
sea-birds flashing and screaming about the 
Hebrides. 

The Madama drew her furs about her and 
endured it. “ To tell the truth, Gratian,” 
she said, “if it wasn’t for her singing I 
should be frightened out of my wits. ’ ’ 

“And you are always saying you don’t 
value your life for a groat’s purchase,” he 
answered. 

“ That’s on shore,” she said. 

But he went about at once and tacked for 
the river mouth ; and they came floating up 
from tack to tack, with the flame in the sky 
above only a paler flame in the water under¬ 
neath. “It is like being in the heart of a 
bubble,” said the Madama. “ It will be 
like this when I am out among the ruby and 
sapphire worlds of viewless constellations. 


72 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


All the same, I had rather see it in a pict¬ 
ure. ’ ’ 

“ Madama ! ” cried Domina. “ When 
God himself paints this ! ” 

“No, he doesn’t. His ministers may. 
And may not his ministers paint on canvas 
as well as on clouds ? ’ ’ 

“ The next thing you will be saying is 
that a diamond is better than a drpp of 
dew ! ” 

“ Why, so it is. And both were born of 
the same force. A diamond is a drop of 
dew eternalized and cut and facetted by the 
lapidary’s art. Yes, I like the landscape all 
as well when it has distilled through a 
human soul, or rather when a soul has gone 
into it, and come out of it, bathed in its 
glory, and told me the meaning of it there. 
I think the Lord does, too ! ’ ’ 

“I am not acquainted,” said Gratian. 

“ Gratian,” said the Madama, “ some¬ 
times affairs shut you in like the clouds. 
But there are times when you see the great 
lights.” 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


73 

“ The Madama does me too much 
honor,” said Gratian, kissing her hand as 
he helped her ashore. “Especially,” he 
added, sotto voce, “ when doing me a good 
turn against her will.” 

They came up through a portion of the 
town full of Sunday loiterers, the selling of 
beer, prohibited in adjoining towns and al¬ 
lowed in this, bringing a weekly rabble 
there about the water. As Gratian left 
them at the head of the slip in order to get 
the carriage, one and another of the rude 
boys and men, catching sight of the strange 
woman in her furs, and of the handsome 
girl beside her, began to fling out various 
remarks about them, edging nearer and 
growing ruder. The more the Madama 
glared at them with her great eyes, the 
bolder they became, and the more they saw 
Domina’s alarm. They had all been drink¬ 
ing more or less; but, of course, they 
meant no harm beyond the moment’s frolic. 
One adventurous fellow slapped the Ma¬ 
dama on the shoulder and invited her to 


74 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


have a beer ; and an urchin lying on a pile 
of boards reached up a long barley-straw 
to tickle her nose. And then, suddenly, as 
Domina heard a sound that had been wont 
to make her heart throb with its summons, 
the solemn stirring beat of the Salvation 
Army drums, and knew that she had friends 
near, Gratian came dashing down, creating 
a diversion by seizing the urchin,* lifting 
him in the air, and throwing him over 
bodily into the shallow water. “ He can 
swim,” said Gratian, coolly. “ And if he 
can’t there are plenty here that can,” and 
he swept the Madama and Domina into the 
carriage before the crowd, busy with the 
boy, had time to hinder. 

Often that night Domina woke with a 
start to hear her heart beating like the throb 
of the great drums; to see Gratian, dark 
and splendid against the western light, lift¬ 
ing that lad and tossing him into the stream. 
She had leaned out the carriage window and 
seen the urchin brought to shore still clutch¬ 
ing his broken barley-straw. She knew 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


75 


very well he might never have been brought 
to shore alive. Yet she could not help the 
wicked, if unconscious, thrill of delight that 
came every time the scene started up in her 
memory with the picture of Gratian; she 
could not help either the strange swift thrill 
at recollection of the touch of Gratian’s arm 
about her, and of his smothered cry, and 
the sweetness of the care for her who herself 
had always had the care to take before. 

He sat on the garden-bench with her late 
that night, with the great trees above them 
softly repeating the sound of the sea three or 
four miles away, the ocean of air breaking on 
their tops as the waves break on the beach, 
with recurrent susurrus. He would have 
smiled at himself three months ago for the 
sweet rusticity of it. “ It is so easy,” he 
said, “ to live the idyllic life of innocence 
here.” For the first time a wild idea of 
work to do, of spreading the wings of a 
guardian angel over Gratian, of bringing 
him into the fortunate parallels where good 
men walk, swept over Domina ; and as in- 


76 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


stantly a rebellious anger with herself for 
thinking of it. Because it was the un¬ 
known, that way he walked now, was it 
necessarily darker than these paths familiar 
in the common light of day ? But it was 
the unknown ; and in spite of herself her 
fancy went out and hovered over it, and 
whether she would or not her thoughts re¬ 
curred to Gratian when she waked of when 
she slept, to his words, his ways, his aspect, 
all the expression of the being so foreign to 
her, so new, yes, so alluring. And in fol¬ 
lowing the pleasant mazes of her thought she 
quite forgot the next day an appointment to 
sing to the old blind people in the alms¬ 
house, and came near forgetting the little 
child she was to bring up for her aunts’ and 
the maids’ care while its mother was away in 
the Reformatory, where she had been sent 
for crimes which in Gratian’s and the Ma- 
dama’s world were called follies. 

Domina had come up from prayer-meet¬ 
ing, where her voice heartened the hesitating 
and inspired the constant, and was sitting on 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


77 


the door-stone, a few nights later, under the 
open sky in the dark. Within was the soft 
lamp-light where two of her old aunts sat 
playing zanken and quarrelling gently over 
the cards, while the other read the placid 
novel aloud. Domina had always been to 
them like a strange bird come to their nest; 
and in a mild optimism they let her do 
much as she would, trusting her knight-er¬ 
rantry was a phase of the new generation 
that would pass. “ We believe in inher¬ 
ited tendencies,” they would say; and go 
on playing zanken. 

She was not thinking of the prayer-meet¬ 
ing, however ; she was thinking of the bird- 
notes which Gratian had been jotting down 
in the morning ; or rather she was thinking 
of Gratian with his head thrown back, lis¬ 
tening, alert, the sun on his olive face and 
sparkling in the shadows of his eyes, and the 
bird singing as if it poured out its strain 
only for him, that airy raptured smile of his 
a better writing of the music of the bird¬ 
song than the written notes themselves. 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


7 « 

She was thinking, with the young and rustic 
ignorance which fancies only wrong in the 
ways outside itself, how soon the innocent 
things of life had absorbed him, the singing 
of the bird, the following of wind and wave 
in his boat; she was thinking of the capac¬ 
ity of this soul for good ; she was thinking 
that the minister had strength and grace for 
himself, but that Gratian needed help to 
approach the heights. She was thinking 
that perhaps after all one work was as good 
as another, and was as well done before the 
footlights as in the church choir; she was 
thinking that life was sweet, the world was 
beautiful, the night was soft and dark ; she 
was thinking of the warm earth light, the 
love light in Gratian’s eyes. She forgot how 
often she had thought the minister’s blind 
blue eyes looked into very heaven. 

The gate barely clicked when Gratian 
came over the turf and sat down beside her. 
Far off, on the edge of the wood, a cornet 
blew out a melancholy tune that filtered 
through distance into airy sweetness; over- 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


79 


head the stars great and throbbing seemed 
to swing like live things out of the lofty 
night, and now and then the soft air stole 
round them, oppressive with the lilies. 

Gratian remained a long time in silence. 
“ What a world it is,” he said, at length. 
“ Who would think, in this delicious dark, 
that the lamps were flaring, and the wicked¬ 
ness of things having all its own way out 
there in my part of it ! If I had been 
born here ! These same stars are shining 
over all the murk of it; but there is no one 
to tell us to look up. No one but the Ma- 
dama to teach us how to serve the ideal, if 
one cared to do it.” 

“ The ideal,” said Domina. “ Why 
not God ? ” 

“You have heard what the Madama has 
to say concerning the interpretation ? ” 

“There is a hymn which says He is 
His own interpreter,” said Domina, tim¬ 
idly. 

“But she tells you that to some people 
art is the language He uses,” said Gratian. 


8o 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


“ Well, think of the wider held, Domina 
mia, while I am away. ’ 9 
“ While you are away ? ” 

“Yes. The mackerel have struck in the 
bay ; and I shall be out day and night with 
the men and the boats. I am going to 
taste the wild joy of living, or the joy of 
wild living— 

“ ‘ To haul the dripping moonlight mesh 
Spangled with herring scale/ 

nomine mutato . 51 

“ But the Madama—and if it storms ? ” 

“ If a tempest swoops down on the fleet I 
shall know the wild joy of drowning, that’s 
all. And there are worse things. But if it 
is inside the river, and they fire guns to 

bring us to the top again-’ ’ 

“Oh, hush, hush ! ” 

“You will find Domina written on my 
heart! ” And then he had paused, as if to 
say more; had looked down at her, saying 
nothing, all the charm of smile and face and 
manner the greater that her imagination gath¬ 
ered it from the darkness; and he was gone. 



Arline came up for Domina the next 
morning. The Madama wanted her. The 
Madama wanted her to sing the Tannhauser 
music, which had come. And here, as 
Domina sang, the old demiurge wept ap¬ 
plause, and here she thundered wrath, and 
here she reassured, and here she led the way. 

Come down to me again to-morrow,” she 
said. And on the morrow, for fear she 
might not come if left to herself, Arline ap¬ 
peared again. 

The minister had gone away on some er¬ 
rand—strenuous, or he would not have left 
the place in the thronged summer season. 
Gratian was off too, and the Madama was 
improving her opportunity. “ Remember 
what it means,” she said one day. “ It is 
the love of a pure woman that saves a man 
6 


8 2 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


from hell. You are not to concern yourself 
with his weakness, his fickleness, his waver¬ 
ing between soul and sense, his earthiness. 
You are only to remember that you love 
him—that you love him, do you hear ? that 
through everything and in spite of every¬ 
thing, and as the Lord in heaven himself 
does, you love him ! ” 

And at another time she cried, “ You are 
Music’s own ! Your atoms must have come 
together to sweet sound, just as a "crystal 
sets to music, if we could only catch the 
controlling melody. It will be a satisfac¬ 
tion to you sometime that you gave an old 
woman the chance to renew her youth in 
you these summer days.” 

A month or two ago Domina would not 
have accepted the words, even as implying a 
work of mercy, the whole atmosphere of the 
Madama had been so alien to her. Now— 
well, she had pleasure in these days herself. 

“ Oh, we should call this plastic art ! ” 
the Madama exclaimed, at the close of one 
morning. “ For you mould yourself into 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


83 


the Master’s very thought. I had no need 
to tell you what it meant.” And she rus¬ 
tled the leaves of the piano scores furiously. 
“Let them rave, the enemy, with their 
nameless fancies of this and that! Tristan’s 
love-music—it is the music of love pure and 
passionate as love has a right to be. Isolde 
is no man’s wife ! And with the strain of 
the love potion in their ears will they cry 
out on all Greek literature that is full of 
men and women driven by the stress of the 
gods ? The Nibelungen legend is unmoral ? 
So then is the Book of Genesis ! No, no, 
do you not see that this man’s thought is 
essentially religious ? It is not necessary to 
write a mass, H a stabat-mater, in order to ex¬ 
press worship. What is Lohengrin but one 
long religious ceremony ? And is submission 
and surrender to the will of God anywhere 
shown in stronger light than when Brun- 
hilde at last springs into Wotan’s arms, en¬ 
veloping him in that white cloak of hers, 
as if she wrapped him about with her love, 
and abandoning herself to the will of her 


8 4 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


father ? Where else in all art is the might 
of Law so exalted, Law that even the God 
of gods shall not break, and that being 
broken abstracts the godhead from the sym¬ 
pathizer with the sin? What other music 
has such lofty theme—hear those chords 
build up the foundations of Valhalla from 
the bottomless abyss and climb the walls 
till the trumpets blow from the topmost 
tower! But I forget, you never saw—you 
never listened to it. You have heard and 
felt none of these music-dramas that are just 
one scale above and beyond real life, on the 
plane and in the climate of the demigods ! ” 

‘ ‘ I should think you really believed in 
the demigods,” said Domina, laughing. 

“I don’t know that I don’t,” said the 
Madama, stroking the black cat. “Ah, 
Gratian would have so much to teach you. 
Domina, unless I am mistaken, Gratian has 
already taught you a great deal.” 

“ He has certainly taught me more Ger¬ 
man than I knew,” was the reply. 

“ Domina,” said the Madama, suddenly 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


85 


fixing the girl with the points of her eyes, 
“ what is the use of fighting against fate ! ” 

Not any, it seemed to Domina that night. 
It was after sunset, and she stood at the 
edge of the garden above the high bluff at 
whose base ran the murmuring stream, the 
soft crimson deepening and darkening about 
her till only a glory of clear gold fell 
through the dark blue-green shadows of the 
interlacing boughs. Just before her the 
great planet flamed like a living spirit; and 
involuntarily Wolfram’s song rose to her 
lips, “ Oh, thou sublime sweet evening 
star ! ’ ’ Another voice rang out below; and 
Gratian, back from his week on the water, 
was climbing the bluff. 

“ Oh, blessed be the hour,” he was sing¬ 
ing. 

“ Gepriesen sei die Macht,” she could 
but reply. 

The two voices rose in one strain upon 
the twilight air. Then Gratian, still sing¬ 
ing, had leaped the low wall; he was the 
minstrel, she was Elizabeth, his arms were 


86 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


about her. “ Nenn’ ich die Freude mein,” 
they sang. She felt the throbs of his heart, 
the breath of his mouth, the drooping and 
darkening of his eyes above her. Close, 
close and warm the arms, the breast where 
her head lay—was it Tannhauser, was it 
Gratian? And then his lips on hers were 
drawing the soul away—yes, drawing soul 
away and leaving only sense. 

Starbeams and flower-scents and memory 
of song, darkness, and folding arms, the 
cloud of passion, the sense of the fulness of 
life, all swept through Domina’s dreams that 
night. And in the morning she opened her 
eyes on a new world, a world of intense 
lights and shadows, heights and depths, and 
inner meanings and glories, where if God 
were not burning in every bush, the flame 
of passion, the thought of Gratian was. She 
did not stay to reflect; it was all joyous 
sensation. Gratian gave her no time for 
meditation. Fie was there betimes, and in 
the house before the dew had left the gar¬ 
den, and it being hot outside, there was a 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


87 


long morning in the cool, dim music-room, 
with one of the aunts in company, faces 
leaning together and hands touching hands 
on the piano-forte, hearts beating with joy 
of their secret. And once he bent swiftly 
and unseen, kissing her fingers as they lay 
upon the keys; and once, the aunt having 
stepped out, as Domina brought some music, 
she hung upon her foot a moment and laid 
her face upon his hair, and he turned and 
caught the face between his hands and 
kissed her mouth in the broad day, the 
beautiful mouth in whose upward-curving 
lips lay all the pride of life. 

And later, they went down to the Ma- 
dama, and found her sitting in her shawls, 
spelling out some archaic musical characters, 
Loro perched and preening himself on the 
back of her chair. 

Her face lightened as she saw them com¬ 
ing in. “Ah, you bring life!” she said. 
“And this strange writing is all the word of 
the dead.” 

“ Hush, hush ! ” said Gratian, quickly. 


88 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


“ Oh, I know out of what star you have 
come! ” she cried. “Light shines there 
that never shines here, it is on your faces 
now ! Winds blow there that never blow 
here—and oh, how sweet they are! You 
shall sing me Isolde’s death-song, Domina. 
Now you will know what it means. ’ ’ 

“ Absit omen!” exclaimed Gratian. 
“ Madama ! Are you mad? Why xlo you 
say such a thing? You make my flesh creep. 
Have you no better word for Domina than 
that?” 

“As if with the atmosphere that people 
bring with them from that star,” she an¬ 
swered, “life or death or anything on earth 
signified! Well, well, you will sing it bet¬ 
ter by and by than now. Here is an old 
epithalamium with which they led the bride 
home once. We will hear the melody of 
that instead.” 

Before they went away the Madama 
stepped into the inner room and came back 
with something glittering in her hand—a 
tiny ring of threads of gold, each thread 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


89 


carrying a silvef-set brilliant. “Once it 
was—a great singer’s,” she said, putting it 
on Domina’s finger. “A king gave it to 
her. It shall be your wedding-ring, I the 
old priestess, you the bride of more than a 
king, Domina—the bride of Art.” 

Why, in all the warmth, and pride, and 
joy of the hour, did Domina shiver then ? 

It was but for an instant. And the next 
day she was off with Gratian in his boat on 
the sea, putting in at a lighthouse-island at 
noon, coming home again with a young 
moon in the sky, Gratian dark in the yel¬ 
low light as the sail ran down, climbing the 
street together, standing in the dusk beneath 
the boughs, rapt in long, silent embraces. 

And so Domina went living for a while in 
this fourth dimension of space, where every¬ 
thing was unreal in its relation to everything 
else, and all was permeated by one personal¬ 
ity, one thought, one emotion. What were 
her old slow, faint thoughts and feelings ? It 
seemed to her as if she had never been alive 
before; and she walked like one in a rosy 


9 o 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


cloud with its glow reflected on her counte¬ 
nance. 

“Gratian,” said the Madams, when she 
saw him alone at last, tossing the parrot, to 
whom she had been teaching a scale, back 
to his perch, “ is it a voice or another love- 
affair that you have secured ? ’ ’ 

“ 1 Both, an’t please your majesty,’ ” said 
Grattan, making a cat’s cradle of a fishing- 
line he had. 

‘ ‘ Can you be serious, Gratian ? ’ ’ 

“ Hardly—at this period of what you call 
the affair.” 

“How long, then, do you expect me to 
be patient ? ’ ’ 

“ Give me grace, Madama.” 

“ Gratian, your heart is like the French 
banner, ‘ perce, troue, crible.’ ” 

“ The more the pity, Madama,” he said, 
lips and eyelids drooping. 

“Sometimes, my child,” she said slowly 
and half inaudibly, “ I feel we do wrong.” 

“A conscience in the case?” lifting his 
eyebrows then with a sort of flash. 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


9 i 


“ The royal creature—it is like caging an 

eagle. Let me ask you. At first-” 

“ Let us forget all about ‘at first/ ” he 
said, intent upon the string. “ I had some¬ 
thing to say of the season. Van writes he 
has secured the greater part of the guaran¬ 
tee-” 

“ On the strength of a wonderful new 
voice.” 

“ I dare say. Vox et preterea, and so on. ” 
‘ ‘ And you dared promise it ? ” 

“ I dare do all that may become a man,” 
he said, winding up his string. “ Here is 
the list of names. Hers is not yet there, 
you see. Not this year. There will be 
need of work first. ’ ’ 

“ In Europe ? ” 

“Not at all. Your method and Mar- 
chesi’s—there isn’t a fillip between them. 
And for the rest, there is not your equal in 
the world.” 

“You count, too, upon what time, expe¬ 
rience, emotion, may teach her. It is a 
word to the wise with her—she needs so lit- 




9 2 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


tie teaching. But I don’t know, Gratian; 
I don’t know.” 

“ Madama, how long since you have been 
of those that put their hand to the plough 
and look back ? ” 

“ My heart misgives me, Gratian. It is 
ill ploughing with the heifer, you know.” 

“ Madama, it is nothing new. ‘ Have 
not you yourself borne half the yoke for 
me?” 

“ You are a graceless elf.” 

“ I asked you to give me grace.” And 
she heard him singing on his way up the hill, 

“ ‘ Et qui, dans l’ltalie, 

N’a son grain de folie, 

Qui ne garde aux amours 
Ses plus beaux jours ? ’ ” 

He had come in some days afterward, 
while Domina paused at the door, looking 
down the street where town and river lay 
below in the light, she herself radiant in the 
beam that streamed over her sunburned 
cheeks and kindled the azure of her black- 
lashed eyes. 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


93 


“ Gratian, do you love her?” whispered 
the Madama, swiftly. 

“ Madama, why rub the bloom off the 
peach ? ’ ’ 

“You mean that Domina passes into the 
procession ? ’’ she exclaimed in the same 
whisper, grown hoarse and angry. 

“I mean nothing. I am living in the 
present. And you know there is no present; 
you gather it out of the future ; you would 
lay hold of it and it is past.” 

“ It is a time for philosophy ! ” 

“ How restless you are. Why not let 
me linger inside this bright dream-bubble, 
this sphere of sweet delusion ? The prying 
fingers of time and chance will break it soon 
enough,” he said, the level light playing 
through his eyes as sunbeams illumine the 
brown shallows of a stream. 

But, looking on at the drama, another and 
an unwonted sensation had for some time 
been oppressing the Madama. Pity is 
pain,” she said now to Gratian. “ A pity, 
a strange pity, for that girl hovers round me 


94 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


like the wings of a bat or some dark 
night-flyer.” 

“ You flatter me, Madama. After all, am 
I such that one loving me needs your com¬ 
miseration to this degree ? ’ ’ 

“ Yes, she loves you, I think. It is more 
than I planned. Loving you much, she 

may love art less. I merely wished-’ ’ 

“You merely wished the impossible, with 
flax and flame.” 

“You are, then, in earnest? ” 

“ Never more so.” 

“ Gratian, on what will you support a 
wife ? ’ ’ 

“It is late for you to ask. There is a 
fortune in her throat. ’ * 

“ And if the singing fail ? ” 

“What evil spirit possesses the Madama? 
Pity ? Pity me, then. Caught in the toils. 
Kindly remember why we came here. ’ ’ 

“ I didn’t think to love the girl myself.” 
“Thanks, Madama,” and he bent and 
kissed the thin brown hand. “/, then, am 
excused,” he said. 



A MASTER SPIRIT 95 

The mistake about this conversation was 
that Domina overheard it. 

It did not at first entirely penetrate that 
cloud of joy in which she lived and breathed. 
She was just then conscious only of being a 
little vexed with the Madama for misjudging 
or doubting Gratian. But she left the porch 
where she had been waiting and the cat 
with which she had stooped to play and 
went back up the hill alone. On her way 
she passed, without seeing him, a little lad 
with whom she had been wont to talk in the 
early spring days. He held up to her a 
stem of flowers. She had some vague rem¬ 
iniscence of an old print she had seen of a 
cherub with a lily in his hand, but none 
whatever of having seen the boy or any boy 
before. The child’s mouth trembled as she 
hurried by. It was only after Gratian, who 
had quickly followed her, had gone singing 
down the hill as usual, that night, and while 
her heart was still beating to the measure of 
his footsteps, that by some freak of memory 
the grieved face of the little lad started up 


96 A MASTER SPIRIT 

before her. At the same moment she re¬ 
membered, too, a woman for whom once she 
had found clothes and work, ignoring her 
disgrace, and by whom also she had swept 
without a word. All that past was far away, 
far outside her consciousness, as if it were 
the half-forgotten story of someone else. 
Suddenly in the dark the child’s lip, the 
woman’s shamed and startled ey£s, hung 
accusingly before her, and she longed to 
go out and comfort them, and again and 
again in one form or another they returned 
through her dreams that night. 

Something else recurred to her. It was, 
as she had lingered at the foot of the garden 
in the black shadow of the hemlocks, the 
vision of the minister, who had waited for 
her till the aunts were half asleep, standing 
there in the doorway under the full glow of 
the hall lamp, the light seeming to radiate 
from him and from the whiteness of his face 
as if he were surrounded by a glory. His 
superb stature, his right-armed strength, had 
always given him, with the men among whom 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


97 


he worked, the influence that equal manhood 
has, and that was not unassisted by his sym¬ 
pathy and courage and the trait of unknown 
power and separateness in him, the trait of 
humanity, too, in the rugged face whose 
only beauty was the blue and blazing, blind 
and useless eyes. Now in the middle night, 
as Domina recalled the vision, she felt as 
one might do who had seen Uriel standing 
in the sun. “ But to have St. John and the 
Apocalypse at breakfast every day,” Gratian 
seemed to be mocking in her ear; and she 
laughed ; and then she burst into tears, she 
could not have told you why. But all sorts 
of images swam through her mind as she 
sobbed — one, the most persistent, of a 
woman, an outcast, left to her own device, 
robbed of calm, tossed off from higher 
spheres by whirling forces like a worthless 
thing to fall, ever to fall, to belong to the 
world of sense where Circe revelled with 
her swine. “ Pshaw!” she said then. 
“ Because she chose to love one man rather 
than another ! ’ ’ 


7 


9 8 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


“ Not one man,” a voice in her thought 
replied ; “ but one life, one service.” 

“ Was it, then, the service of sin she had 
taken?” 

“ It was the abandonment of the service 
of good.” 

“ But to carry the atmosphere of good 
into that other life-” 

** She had such strength for thkt. She 
had so withstood temptation. Yes, if she 
could! ” 

“Was that other life, then, so in need of 
good? so bad in itself? ” 

“ On the contrary, it was a life lived in 
a glare of light only equalled by that about 
a throne, in the sight of all men, with less 
opportunity for wrong, therefore, than social 
life affords ; a life of close work, of care, of 
sympathy.” 

“ Quite a priesthood I ” with sardonic 
emphasis. 

“ Quite capable of a priesthood to the 
people, more than once having proved its 
priesthood to the people. That was not the 



A MASTER SPIRIT 


99 


point: she had promised herself to another 
priesthood.” And so the voices bandied on 
till morning. 

“You are twice as interesting without 
your beauty sleep, Domina mia,” Gratian 
said next day. “ One may fancy then some¬ 
thing of the inconnue about you. What 
phantasmal sort of a care is it that keeps you 
awake ? With those heavy eyes you become 
a woman of romance, the woman with a 
past ! ” 

“ And is that the woman to love? ” she 
asked, down-looking and abased. 

“ You are the woman to love, whatever 
you are ! ” he said. 


VI 

Domina had sung in church as usual dur¬ 
ing the time that a stranger had, after a 
fashion, filled Mr. Johns’s place. -But Gra- 
tian had been with her, and the spell of his 
presence had scarcely intermitted. 

Gratian had gone to town, however, when 
she next saw the minister in his own place. 
For all its strength, there was a pathetic 
quality in the minister’s face which she had 
not observed before. Whether it were so or 
not, Domina could not help the fancy that 
he had been looking into a grave. “ As 
touching the dead that they rise, ’ ’ she read 
as she idly turned the leaves of her book. 
And she half wondered whether it were the 
light of that bare window and blue sky be¬ 
hind him—what Gratian called the proper¬ 
ties—or the power given from heaven—of 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


IOI 


which Gratian knew nothing—that now so 
illumined his countenance. She heard, now 
and then, fragments of the words he read : 
“ I found an altar with the inscription, ‘ To 
the Unknown God ’ him declare 

I unto you . . . dwelleth not in 
temples made with hands. . . . We 
ought not to think that the godhead is like 
unto gold or silver or stone graven by art.” 
She questioned for a second what the Ma- 
dama would think of that—that the god¬ 
head dwelt not in art—as if it could hardly 
pass without her approval. And then the 
sweetness of one of the arias she had been 
singing with the Madama ran across her 
memory like a trickle of honey distinct 
from the thin flow of this tune she had 
sung, of this tune she was about to sing. 
But all at once, on the rolling of the or¬ 
gan, the words seemed to start up in let¬ 
ters of fire: 

“ Sun and moon and stars decay, 

Time shall soon this earth remove, 

Rise, my soul, and haste away ; ” 


102 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


and when in the following verse she heard 
the minister’s voice like a tolling bell across 
her solo, 

‘ ‘ There is everlasting peace, 

Rest, enduring rest, in heaven,” 

it was fortunate that the choir and the con¬ 
gregation came in on the next lines, for her 
tones were only a whisper, and she was in a 
trance of forgetfulness during all the* sermon, 
till at the close she saw Mr. Johns standing 
with uplifted arms, while his voice had 
ceased and his words still echoed on her 
ears, 

“ Ad cceli atria 
Haec mea patria ! ” 

Yes, heaven was his country. She had 
taken from him the possibilities of earth. 
And for what ? The Madama’s question of 
Gratian, if she were one of the procession, 
flashed on her recollection, and Gratian’s 
exclamation that he was caught in the toils. 
She felt herself grow red with angry shame. 

She had not meant to walk along with 
the minister; but before she knew it, mov- 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


103 


ing easily as he did by a sort of sixth sense, 
a faculty where instinct supplied the place of 
sight, he was beside her. 

They went down the hill, with very few 
words, to a house in the lower town. “I 
shall want you here,” said the minister, as 
they paused at a door there. A young girl 
sat in the room they entered, her eyes upon 
the floor, the purple pallor of brain trouble 
on her face. “ Her nerves are jangled and 
out of tune,” the minister had said; “ but 
she is not incurable. Argument is of no 
service to her. But I remember David and 
King Saul. I think it not impossible that 
music should order some unison again 
while the treatment is taking effect. She 
has not slept for days. If you can only 
command sleep it will cool her heated 
brain.” 

“There is a sin unto death,” said the 
girl, in a dull voice, looking up as they 
came in. “I have not committed it, I am 
only about to do so.” 

It seemed as if in the next moment might 


io4 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


come some violent outbreak. Her father 
was pacing up and down another room ; 
her mother was weeping beside her. 

Domina took the girl’s hand; but the 
ring on her finger scratched it, and the girl 
drew it away. Domina slipped the bauble 
into her pocket. “You have never com¬ 
mitted the sin,” said the girl, turning her 
burning gaze upon her. 

“ She takes us on her voice, where there 
is no possibility of sin,” said the minister. 

‘ ‘ There is no such place, ’ ’ said the girl; 
“it is black, all black. And I am lost, oh, 
I am lost in it ! ” 

“ ‘The Magnificat,’ ” said the minister. 
And startling and thrilling, for one moment 
making the heart shake, the next inspiring, 
filling with rapture, Domina sang a strain 
that lifted one into the presence of almighty 
power. The flame died out of the girl’s 
eyes as she listened ; a soft glow replaced it. 
“ Yes, ” she murmured. * ‘ But to be a black 
mote in such a heaven ! ” 

The minister sat beside the mother. 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


105 

Then presently, in quite another manner, 
with her arm over the girl’s shoulder, Do- 
mina was singing, “ The Lord my pasture 
shall prepare,” and the hymn that had 
meant nothing to her in the morning, and 
that now seemed brimming with ecstasy. 
She was still singing psalm after psalm to 
the old Gregorian measures, when the girl’s 
head bent forward, her eyelids drooped and 
closed, and she was in a deep sleep, and her 
father came ' and lifted and laid her on a 
bed, while the voice tolled softly on, grow¬ 
ing more and more remote, far and sweet as 
evening bells across water before it ceased. 

“We will come again to-morrow,” said 
the minister. 

As they went back, and up the hill, the 
children joined them one after another, 
brown and bright-eyed tatterdemalions. 
One little stumbling, crying thing the minis¬ 
ter carried in his arms; another clung to 
Domina’s skirt, running along, doubling her 
steps with theirs. It was all so much the 
way it used to be, she might have doubted 


io6 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


if the last weeks and months had not Deen a 
dream. 

She said nothing of it to the Madama 
when she went down to sing. But she was 
hampered all that morning by a singular 
sensation of a double life, a sort of anger at 
both, a fear of the moment when she should 
see Gratian, a fear of the moment when she 
must tell Mr. Johns that she had chosen her 
way. 

Had she chosen it? What was this the 
minister was saying after she had sung the 
young girl to tears, to smiles, to sleep again ? 
—that there was no such reward as hers at 
that moment in all the rapture of applaud¬ 
ing throngs—no, not in that of listening an¬ 
gels, the reward of joy in leading a spirit up 
out of darkness. 

But when that night Gratian was again 
beside her, the dark beauty of his face bend¬ 
ing half unseen above her, the charm of his 
nearness about her, all this was obscured for 
a little. 

Yet his laugh, when she had told him of 


A MASTER SPIRIT 107 

the sick girl, grated on her highly wrought 
state, and seemed to open a window in the 
habitation of his soul upon its narrow occu¬ 
pant. “ Domina,” he said, “ it is idle to 
delay. You will come and share my fort¬ 
unes, such as they are, at once. You will 
give me a right to forbid your wasting your 
vitality on these clods. You will not take 
off your wedding-ring again.” 

“ To forbid? ” 

“Yes,” he said, “if I am master of 
your fate. ’ ’ 

Her quick thin blaze of anger was like a 
flash-light on the point where she stood, 
misled by a phantom of passion, and on the 
precipice of marriage with a man whom— 
was it possible that in time, in any time, she 
could despise Gratian ! But Gratian perhaps 
saw the danger; for before she could speak 
he had held her fast, murmuring love-words. 
And what was this upon her face — not 
kisses, but tears. She knew when he left 
her that she was in bondage, pledged with 
a pledge she must redeem, since it was Gra- 


io8 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


tian’s joy or his despair. She recalled as 
she sat alone what she had heard the Ma- 
dama say of pity, and she saw that her love 
had too early trodden on the heels of that 
great pain. 

She went next day to sing to the mad 
girl; but she realized, coming away, that 
she was to have little more of this work, 
she was to do no more good in the world, 
she was only to give pleasure. 4 ‘But she 
that liveth in pleasure is dead while she 
liveth, ’ ’ she repeated to herself. 

She understood more personally now that 
the Madama had been instructing her in 
roles she was to render before multitudes. 
Let out into the largeness of that unknown 
world, she was yet in prison. She felt her¬ 
self shrinking and shrivelling to escape it. 
And the worst of it was that her chains 
were still of her own choosing ; whether it 
were love, or whether it were pity, she 
could not leave Gratian. When he was 
away now she was wretched till he came; 
when he came she was wretched till he went. 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


109 

And she was so tired of the perpetual 
theme; of the Madama’s monologues. Art 
told the world the meaning of God, for¬ 
sooth ! Had not Mr. Johns said that to 
love God was to know him, and to love 
God in man was to serve him, and that 
whoso did his will should know of the doc¬ 
trine ? What more did she want ? To do 
Gratian justice, he did not waste many 
words with it; delight and the senses were 
the gods to which he burned incense. 

But the imprisonment was growing be¬ 
yond her bearing. “ Gratian,” she said, 
with a faint affectation of blandishment, “ I 
shall have to confess it: I have been de¬ 
ceiving you. No, no,” she exclaimed then 
at the lifting of his eyebrows, “ you have 
been deceiving yourself! You have con¬ 
jured in my place something that does not 
exist. You do not recognize that I am only 
a commonplace country - girl. You have 
dressed me out-” 

“ With all the tricks of my fancy, my 
affluent fancy ? I am not listening to you, 



I 10 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


Domina. I, whose lot has been cast among 
them, the phenomenon, the pretender, not 
to know genius when I see it ! The world 
always knows it, anyway. When it is wild, 
is mad over you—ah, I forefeel the fire run¬ 
ning in my veins at the thought that the 
Domina is mine! All the court worship 
the princess, it may be, but the page who 
slips in at the dark postern where*her kiss 
awaits him, he who alone may call Preciosa 
by name—well, I shall know how he feels ! ’ ’ 

“ But it is all impossible, unreal, it will 
not be!” said Domina, moving off. ‘‘It 
cannot, oh, it cannot be ! I see that more 
plainly every day. I cannot do what you 
expect. Other things, better things, things 
I can do, are expected of me here. This is 
my world. Gratian, you must give me back 
my word.” 

“I will give you back your kisses ! ” he 
exclaimed, laughing. The feeling of degra¬ 
dation was what she might have had had he 
branded her with a red-hot iron. “ But 
your word,” he said, “never!” Then, 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


hi 


after a moment’s silence, he exclaimed 
again, “ You don’t know me yet, Domina ! 
That yellow-haired god of this place—be¬ 
fore he shall compass his ends, we will all 
tumble into one grave together ! Domina, 
my tragedy queen, do you want tragedy? 
Then let me tell you that if there is any 
more, any more of this—by the Lord above 
us, Domina, if you cry quits here, I will 
blow out my brains at your feet!” And 
after that it seemed to her that she could 
hear her fetters clank. 

All the more the fetters clanked that 
Gratian’s step could still make her heart 
beat quickly, that his gaze could make the 
blood mount to her unaccustomed cheek, 
that she listened to the tone of his voice 
with a longing for its gay sweetness, that she 
cringed at the thought of her weakness. 
“ It is a dream, it will pass ; it is a habit, 
I will break it! ” she said to herself. “ I 
am flesh and blood—I must go through with 
it—it is the experience of flesh and blood. 
But I am also spirit. I will come out of it.” 


I 12 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


But of what use to come out of it? Her 
word was pledged. Her life, his life, per¬ 
haps was forfeit. She could not escape Gra- 
tian’s power. And then also the grandilo¬ 
quent threat with its poor melodrama was 
full of terrible meaning to her, and hung 
over her unsophisticated fancy like a sword 
on a hair. 

“Madama,” said Gratian, “ the primi¬ 
tives had an old saying about making a 
spoon or spoiling a horn. If I set up my 
gods in this place and lived the life here, 
what shape, what polish that spoon would 
have ! ’ * 

“ For bread and milk.” 

“ And we must dip into spiced wine and 
jars of honey—devil’s bro’.” 

“ You tire me, Gratian.” 

“Basta! Basta! ” cried the parrot, 
twitching his way up her shawl, pausing now 
and then upon the way for a burst of un¬ 
canny laughter. 

“Devil’s bro’, indeed!” she said. 
“ The life of art as we know it, as she will 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


“3 

live it, is not one whit less innocent than 
the idyllic* life of the sheepfold and pasture, 
is more innocent than the life she frequents 
down in the back alleys with that shaggy 
blind man of hers. ’ * 

“ Not yet. By all the powers, hers not 
just yet! Why don’t you wring that de¬ 
moniac bird’s neck? Be still, Loro ! ” 

“ Buenos noches, senor! A dios, a 
dios ! ” cried Loro. 

“ And, innocent or not, it is not her life. 
Take a flower from its habitat, it refuses to 
bloom. The girl I saw dancing on the 
grass in the sunshine to her own singing is 
dead now.” 

“ Very well. Something more to the 
purpose will rise from the ashes. I confess 
I doubted for a little while. I felt—a weak¬ 
ness, a folly ! I was wrong to hesitate. As 
well pity the bit of clay plunged in the fire 
that is to come out of it transparent, many- 
colored, precious as a gem. But you didn’t 
suppose your course was all as plain sailing 

as this harbor.” 

8 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


114 

“This harbor is by no means plain sail¬ 
ing.’’ 

“ Well, let that go. The girl is under a 
possession-’ ’ 

“ Madama, you know how to say a pleas¬ 
ant thing. It is a possession—her faith in 
me ! ” 

“ She hasn’t any faith in you. That is 
the trouble. “Yes, possession, obsession, 
what you will. You are like a prince out of 
the halls of Eblis come into her pastorale. 
She does not reconcile the apparent oppo¬ 
sites. She is in the blue, and you are out 
of the scarlet. By and by she may find that 
blue and scarlet make purple—royal purple. 
You have overcome her with personal charm 
—as you have many another. But she was 
born of the people that think it wrong to be 
happy, who escape the bands of rigid con¬ 
science only as they penetrate the confines 
of the other life. Well, you live in this life, 
Gratian.” 

“ There is no other to live in,” said Gra¬ 
tian, sullenly. 



A MASTER SPIRIT 


115 

“You will discover if there is or not. 
When you open your eyes some day on 
the wearer of that likeness of a kingly 
crown-’ ’ 

“That shape had none, you remember.” 

“ But tout autre chose—the girl may be 
dead—the woman that will arrive then will 
have had experience of life, of passion, of 
joy, of sorrow, hope, loss. Her genius will 
transmute it all. We shall have the great 
singer, the great actress, the tragic muse ! ” 

“Ah! ” 

“ What did we come for, Gratian ? Vio¬ 
letta’s Ah, fors e lui—Fidelio’s Abscheu- 
licher. See her, hear her—in the Dove 
song of the Contessa! It is Lucia’s Oh 
gioja as never before. It is Gilda’s Caro 
nome ! Yes, yes, it is Isolde’s Death Song ! 
We shall have what we came for ! ” 

“ My God, Madama! You take fire in 
your hands as if it were snow ! ’ ’ 

“ Snow burns the hands sometimes, Gra¬ 
tian.” 

It had been a long hot summer; the twi- 



ii 6 A MASTER SPIRIT 

lights, their purple undershot with mantling 
scarlet, had prolonged themselves into the 
unusual heats of September. The Madama, 
who had revived under the fervors, omitting 
her tisanes, forgetting her shawls, out more 
than once or twice on the river with Gratian 
and Domina, was coming up from the boat 
with them now. The river, the town, and 
higher up the spire and trees and lawns, were 
bathed in the splendor of the harvest-moon. 

“ What moonlight! ” said the Madama. 
“ What glory ! Gratian, do we ever see the 
moon at home ? What an immensity of 
windy sky ! It does not need to be May to 
be Siegmund and Sieglinde weather.” Gra¬ 
tian began singing the Spring Song. “ What 
could be more beautiful,” she said, “ than a 
bride in all her veils in this moonlight ? ” 

“ Domina,” said Gratian. 

“Yes. Domina. And it is folly for you 
to be going and coming any more now be¬ 
tween this and town. Gratian, it is time to 
be practical. Take your wife with you and 
go for good and all! ” 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


117 

‘ ‘ Madama proposes, ’ ’ said Gratian. ‘ ‘ But 
Domina disposes.” 

“ It is in your part,” she whispered, 
when bidding the girl good-night. “ Do 
not refuse him, Domina. When once you 
accept the cast you will be with us and of 
us. It is no use—it is your fate.” 

No, Domina knew it was no use. She 
went up the rest of the way through the 
moonlight with Gratian, feeling already that 
she was a changeling—powerless to break 
her bonds, unwilling to accept them. 

“ Let it be as the Madama says, Domina 
mia,” he said, as they lingered in the still 
dewless garden. “We need no wedding- 
paraphernalia. Come to me as you are— 
only come ! This is Monday — in two 
days-” 

Domina looked up the cloudless vault as 
if she expected some angel of help to start 
out of the unseen. But if it was to be— 
she drew in her breath slowly and with a 
sigh. “1 must speak to my aunts,” she 
said. “ It will not make much difference 



n8 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


to them—but they must know, of course. 
And—I must speak to—Mr. Johns.” 

Gratian swore a great oath, an oath that 
made her tremble with the nervous terror that 
unwonted women have of oaths. “ Never 
let me hear that man’s name again!” he 
cried. “ Never have it in your thoughts 
again ! Forget it! Is he going to follow 
me with his blind eyes like an accusing ghost 
about the world ? ’ ’ 

“Oh, no—me—me! ” shuddered Domi- 
na. “ He is going to stand an accusing an¬ 
gel of the work I have forsaken! ” 

And then Gratian’s arms were round her 
again, and he was imploring her forgiveness 
with tenderest embraces. “Oh, go, go ! ” 
Domina murmured. “I will keep my 
word. ... In two days. 

But you don’t know what it costs me. 

. . . Oh, go now ! ’ ’ 

“ No,” he said. “ Sit here in the moon¬ 
light, and let it calm you. Where is your 
wrap—let me fold it round you. I overlook 
the implication of your words, because they 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


IJ 9 

contain a subtler flattery. Domina,” he 
said, standing before her, “ if I were gener¬ 
ous, I might go, and come back no more. 
But—you are too precious. ’ ’ 

It rose to her lips, the thought, the re¬ 
membrance ; yes, there was a fortune in her 
throat. But she did not say it; the break 
in his voice was not false; she knew he 
loved her. She was not even worth his lov¬ 
ing her, without courage or will or strength 
or personality. But oh, if she could sud¬ 
denly cease to be ! 

One of the aunts came to the open door, 
the one that Gratian thought looked like a 
woolly lamb, and stepped into the gar¬ 
den. They went into the house with her, 
and Gratian running to the piano-forte be¬ 
gan playing a light and tripping measure. 
“What you want is ballet-music, ’ * he said, 
glancing discreetly at the aunts in the next 
room. “ You have the vapors ; carbonic 
acid gas dispels them. Ballet-music is the 
sparkling wine of the feast. This little ga¬ 
votte bubbled out of the identical brain be- 


120 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


fore you. It seems to me,” still lightly 
playing, “ that life is something richer under 
the conditions that produce music and joy 
than with—a friar of orders gray ! Why 
don’t you toss your arms and dance to it? 
A month ago you would. Ah, and a month 
hence you will! Well, if all else fails I can 
make my way as a ballet master. I have a 
dance in mind-” 

‘ ‘ A ballet master ! ’ ’ 

“Why, yes. They gave one once the 
cross of the Order of Christ. That surprises 
you ? There are so many surprises in store 
for you ! ” he said, bending toward her ca¬ 
ressingly, playing now the Sylvia dances. 
“Some time, when you are on the stage, 
a grand ballet going on before you-’ ’ 

“ Gratian ! ” 

“The music will run through your veins 
as if it meant to break out in wings at your 
ankles, and you will have all you want to do 
not to be one of them.” 

“ I—one of them ! ” 

“ My lovely lady, the Madama would tell 




A MASTER SPIRIT 


I 2 I 


you that all art is one, that the ballet is life, 
that a premiere danseuse and a prima don- 


“ Serve at the same altar,” she said, 
bitterly. 

“ Domina, you could be a Franciscan 
nun and yet be a prima donna, if you 
would.” 

‘ * And a ballet dancer ! ’ ’ 

“Well, it wouldn’t be likely,” he said, 
laughing, and closing the music with a 
crash. “ By Jove, is it moonlight or dawn- 
light ? ” sauntering to the door. “What 
indescribable colors ! Come out again, Do¬ 
mina, for one last stroll. It is another 
world—or this one washed with green sil¬ 
ver.” And as Domipa did not rise, he 
came back for her. 

“ O Nightingale, 

What doth she ail ? ” 

he sang, bending before her and lifting her 
by the two hands, and drawing her out 
again with him. “ I think,” he said, “ that 



122 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


you need to change your poles, and what 
you need to do it with is a bottle of 
champagne! ' ’ 

And having thus completed the list of his 
offences, he kissed her and was off, leaving 
her standing alone and silvered in the moon¬ 
shine. 

When was it that she had stood here with 
the Minister in the full glow of a high-rid¬ 
ing moon ? Was it only last night, coming 
home from singing that mad girl to rest ? 
The giant life of the great gray tree-stems, 
their black and sharp shadows, the light 
and wavering shadows of the thin-leaved 
branches, that with their slow stir and 
change in vague mist and shine showed al¬ 
luring avenues and alleys to she knew not 
what mystical dreamland—she had described 
them to him; the sky flooded with light, 
that seemed as if every moment it were 
about to open and let some further splendor 
out. il It is full.of deity,” he said, lifting 
his white face. And then a dark and lofty 
bough had softly swayed down in the -wind 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


123 


and swept his brow with its plume like the 
touch of some vast passing pinion. And 
to-night, all the mystic significance fled, it 
was a scene in some theatre, and she—she 
with her double life — its poor painted 
queen. The clocks of the town below tolled 
midnight. The sound floated up through 
the stillness and the solemn splendor like a 
funeral bell. “It is the passing bell,” said 
Domina, as she went in. 

But long before that, through this same 
stillness of the night she had heard Gra- 
tian’s step as he went down keep the time 
of some melody in his thought, and present¬ 
ly shrill and clear as a piccolo came his 
whistle in more mad and sweet dance-music, 
and then, his voice ringing through the si¬ 
lent street, she heard him singing without 
words, she remembered it afterward, meas¬ 
ures of wild, sad loneliness, the second theme 
of the Danse Macabre. 

It was the afternoon of the next day; 
Domina had not come down; the Madama 


124 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


went up to surprise her in the garden. She 
surprised the little old aunts instead—the 
queen of all the Stanleys not more so. They 
felt as if one of the creatures out of the yel¬ 
low Michel Angelo prints in the morning 
parlor had stepped down to them in the 
tawny woman with her scarlet wrappings 
and the spark in her black eyes. 

The woman of the print would not per¬ 
haps have been followed by the sprightly 
Arline carrying a poodle clipped into the 
likeness of some curious black demon, before 
which their own black tabby as she fled 
swelled into the likeness of another demon. 

But the Madama could make herself very 
gracious, and she sat in the afternoon sun¬ 
shine, regardless of the wind that was swing¬ 
ing through the tree-tops, blandly receiving 
their confused apologies for neglecting her 
acquaintance, but breathing the air now rich 
with the perfume of the ripening apples and 
spicy with the grapes, as if it were a luxury 
not to be too fully or frequently enjoyed. 
And she walked down with Domina at 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


125 


length, the last disturbance of her thought 
allayed in the conviction that God and 
Nature and Art alike required the removal 
of Domina from this small round and region. 

Gratian had gone out in his boat for a last 
sail. 

“ You should let sailing alone to-day. 
You should be with Domina,” she had said. 
“ A jar while the crystal is setting destroys 
the whole work. ’ ’ 

“ The crystal is set, Madama,” said Gra¬ 
tian. “And it is a flawless diamond, you 
will see when it is cut—white; of the first 
water. And as for me—it is a day when 
all the winds of God are blowing. Present¬ 
ly the weather changes. I must have my 
last tumble on the bar’s foam, my last sail 
on the river ! ’ ’ 

“ Gratian, you think of nothing but 
pleasure. ’ ’ 

“ Of what else should I think ? For what 
else do I live ? The plum is full of juice— 
and for whom ? The sky is full of sun¬ 
shine; I am here to have the best of it. 


126 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


The world is all for pleasure, Madama, 
mine or yours. That is what art means; 

that is what religion means-” 

“ When art comes to that, art is lost! ” 
“Just as you will, Madama. But if you 
like aloes in your cup, I like honey in mine. 
And when there is no more honey, why, 
‘ the wine of life is poured,’ and so good¬ 
night. Besides, I have conquered—hip and 
thigh, I think—and I need nothing less 
than the whole sea and sky to shout it out 
in. And besides, too, Domina will be 
packing, as Arline should be—Has? All 
the better. And I have a fisherman or two 
waiting for a douceur.” 

“ Where is my douceur, Gratian? ” 

‘ ‘ Madama, this atmosphere has affected 
you with a conscience—for other people. 
Well, your douceur is in the gratification 
of an approving conscience ; that you have 
helped me to happiness ; that you are the 
best friend a sinful man ever had ! ’ ’ And 
then a sudden scarlet flamed into the wom¬ 
an’s cheek where he lightly kissed it. “ Au 



A MASTER SPIRIT 


127 


reste,” he said, gayly, “the summer has 
done well by me, and I have done well by 
the summer! * * And he went out the gate 
turning to wave his hand at her and singing, 

“ Wipe, wipe the tear ! I take my cue 
In lightsome laughter ; 

My turn to-night, to-morrow you 
Will follow after ! ” 

“ A dios ! ” cried the parrot. 

And then the Madama had gone up and 
returned with Domina, the flying leaves 
dancing round them on the wind with a 
rustling laughter as if they knew some weird 
secret, and Arline had brought them their 
tea as they sat in the sheltered porch. 

The long low town lay beneath them, 
sparkling in the sunset that turned the river- 
mouth to sheets of rose and pearl and 
flame. Far out across the harbor they could 
see the white line of breakers toss in fantas¬ 
tic change, and beyond the distant stretch 
of purpling sea cloudy islands with a white 
light-house rising there like a ghost on whose 
brow suddenly a star glimmered, as the ray 


128 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


of its lamp trembled out upon the twilight 
of the horizon. The wind went down. 
Slowly the light died about them in ruddy 
shadows. It grew close and warm, as if there 
were thunder in the cloud that hung over 
the east. 

“ You are so silent, Domina.” 

“ Oh, Madama, Madama ! ” said the girl. 
“I am so unhappy ! ” , 

“ Domina, is there anyone who is 
happy ? ’ ’ 

“ Oh, Madama ! ” 

“l suppose a slug is. But, no, nothing 
that moves to anything better. To be happy 
is to be content, to aspire no more.” 

“ But with me-” 

“ With you it is all a matter of meridian. 
You are slipping out of one environment to 
another. When you are adjusted to your 
new estate, when you are satisfied in love, 
when you hear the sweet heart-swelling 
thunders of applauding hands and voices, 
when you are living in the world of 


music- 




A MASTER SPIRIT 


129 

“I have always lived in music more or 
less/’ said Domina. 

“ Not in the way of this wider world/' 

“ But I have had as much content from 
simple sounds, perhaps, as you have had 
from orchestras. Sometimes the striking of 
a gong-” 

“Yes, yes, that is often a ravishing noise 
with its great invasion and introcession of 
sound.” 

“To think,” said Domina, willing to 
keep the talk impersonal—since to what pur¬ 
pose anything else—“ of the possibilities of 
sound in that sheet of metal makes it easier 
to see how all the air can be full of spiritual 
existences. ’ ’ 

“ Humph ! ” said the Madama. 

“ And the lowing of distant cows is another 
rich simple sound,” said Domina, presently. 

“ So is a single swimming bell. If those 
terrible church-bells gave one peal-” 

“When the hunters are on the marshes, 
a rifle-shot will echo and refine away to a 
thread of tone-’ * 


9 





130 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


“ What is that? ” cried the Madama, with 
a start. ‘ ‘ Did you hear it ? Heavens \ 
What is that, Arline ? ’ ’ 

“ One drives a nail,” replied Arline from 
within, going out upon its repetition to in¬ 
quire. 

It was a low prolonged throb on the dull 
air of the warm dark night. Presently it 
came again. 

“ They are drilling at the armory,” said 
the Madama. “ They must be grounding 
arms.” 

It came again then, and again, as if it 
were the regular beat of some great muffled 
heart. * 

‘ ‘ It is the drum of the Salvation Army, ’ ’ 
said Domina. 

There was not a breath of wind when it 
was repeated, as if rebounding from the 
thunder-cloud that covered the rising moon> 
long, low, clear, alive with vibration, like 
the deathly trumpet-peal of the Numantian 
before the last great sacrifice, making them 
shiver with its fulness, with its alien rhythm, 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


I 3 I 

pervading Domina with a mysterious appre¬ 
hension, a sense of the close limit of another 
sphere. 

Once more the mighty note rang out, 
thrilling, awful, terribly sweet, like some 
smothered peal of the hosts of hell sounding 
a night-charge on the cohorts of heaven, the 
report rolling and rolling away over marsh 
and meadow, echo echoing echo, the reso¬ 
nance lingering at last only in the breasts of 
the two listening women. 

“ It is dreadful,” murmured the Madama. 
“ It is the stroke of fate. It is the three 
blows in the Fifth Symphony.” 

“ But yet,” said Domina, “ there is all 
nature’s pity in the sound.” 

“ Nature has no pity,” said the Madama. 
“Life or death, it is all one to her.” 

A little sighing air arose and fell; and on 
a hush, as if the whole world were listening 
with them, the great gun boomed again, 
and they began to shake with the conscious¬ 
ness that some doom had befallen. “Oh ! ” 
cried the Madama. “It is bursting upon 


132 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


my heart! ’ ’ The air went humming by 
them like the fan of a spectral wing. But 
then, as a far-off bank of vapor out at sea 
caught the echo and tossed it back to the 
leafy screen of the hill, a thousand delicate 
voices seemed to take it up in puffs of sound 
repeating sound, lingering like films of mist 
among the boughs before streaming off with 
it into the night; and the airy impalpable 
modulation touched Domina’s nerves with 
a fine electric delight trembling some¬ 
where between tears and laughter. ‘ ‘ Lis¬ 
ten ! ” she whispered. “ Listen ! Did you 
ever hear anything so aerial, so uncon¬ 
fined ? ’ ’ 

It came then for the last time, a rolling 
organ - note that reached with quivering 
shocks the cavernous depths of the thunder¬ 
cloud at last, plunged there and rolled from 
hollow to hollow, from height to height, 
from heaven to heaven, and passed, dying 
tremulous and fine as the thrill of some great 
silver harp - string. And for one instant 
Domina sprang to her feet, as if she had felt 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


133 

the walls fall all about her and were free 
with an infinite freedom. 

But the Madama had her hand on her, 
and drew her back. “ I wonder where Gra- 
tian is,” she said. “I am a fool ! But I 
feel as if the end of the world had come. ’ * 

“Because we hear an atmospheric echo.” 
But in quick reaction Domina caught her 
mood again ; and they sat there in silence 
and in awe of they knew not what, and they 
knew not for how long. 

People were hurrying down the street in 
the gloom, one or two came up and went 
by. “It is some one drowned in the har¬ 
bor early this afternoon,” the voices said 
outside. “They are firing great guns to 
bring the body to the surface. * ’ 

Arline came running up the porch breath¬ 
lessly, and threw herself on her knees, hid¬ 
ing her head in the Madama’s lap. “ Oh, 
Madama! Monsieur ! It is he ! ” she 
sobbed and cried distractedly in her own 
tongue. “ He was tangled in the ropes! 
They will bring him here ! 1 ’ 


134 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


Other people were following her, groping 
through the dark. Domina heard their feet, 
their heavy movement, their murmur, 
divined the tall form of the blind Minister 
with arms outstretched, a pitying angel’s 
arms, to receive the Madama as she threw 
off Arline like a leaf and rose, a black 
shadow on the shade, flinging up her hands, 
and crying, in a piercing voice, “*My son ! 
My son ! My son ! ’ ’ 

And then a pang of pity, a pang of love 
smote Domina. For an instant Gratian’s 
smiling face hung before her there on the 
darkness, radiant as if a star, a bale star, had 
burst to let it out ; for an instant, as it van¬ 
ished, she seemed to see a thousand liveried 
angels. And then the air about her was 
swelling like a bubble, enlarging to the 
limits of the universe ; heart and brain were 
swelling with it beyond the bounds of 
space. She summoned all her powers to 
vanquish the swift unconsciousness; life 
flowed back in a tingling agony, but life to 
be suffered, to be blest, the sense of living 


A MASTER SPIRIT 


135 


many lives in one. And kneeling, in an 
anguish she had not known she could feel, 
with the Madama’s head upon her bosom, 
Domina, as she thought, took up her old 
service. 

“ The Madama proposes,” Gratian once 
said. 

When the last great singer comes to our 
shores, crowned with the wreaths of Europe, 
and by the spell hidden in the far-reaching 
depth and sweetness of her voice—the spell 
born of gladness and of tears, as sunbeams 
skimming over water evolve the melting 
mists, the dazzling bow—sings to every 
soul its sorrow, to every heart its joy, to 
every life its love, you will understand that 
Gratian might have added, “ And the Ma¬ 
dama disposes also.” 
























































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